Late Night Is Already Over

Kimmel, Colbert and the current state of a once-hallowed American institution

I don’t usually write about politics. It’s not really my niche, and there are others who do a much better job at it than me. I only do it in select instances where politics and comedy overlap. Whether it’s SNL and its recent failed attempts at presidential satire, the original campaign to #CancelColbert, or Elon Musk being painfully cringe and unfunny, I try to leverage my experience as a comedian to provide a unique insight others might not have.

The recent suspension of Jimmy Kimmel feels like one of those opportunities. There is a clear intersection of the political and the comedic. A late-night talk show host made some critical comments about the President on Monday, and by Wednesday he was seemingly out of a job. This is something that’s totally in my wheelhouse, and I should be fired up to talk about the importance of free speech in comedy, even (or especially) when it upsets people in power.

But when I heard about Kimmel’s fate, I only had one thought: I don’t really care. I know I should, but when I think about his plight I feel nothing.

I had to stop and ask myself why that was. Was it because of my personal politics? Maybe. I’ve drifted more rightward as I’ve gotten deeper into my 30s. That old adage about being young and liberal and having a heart vs being old and conservative and having a brain feels true to me. It feels especially true once you have a family and want to be able to ride the New York City subway without being accosted by schizo vagrants on a daily basis, but I digress.

I found Kimmel’s controversial comments to be both misleading and condescending. By claiming “The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” he helped further a false narrative spread by media talking heads to obfuscate and distract from - per the released court filing - the seemingly far-left motivations for Kirk’s murder.

But, even if that wasn’t the case, even if the shooter was a Groyper (Side note: I can’t believe I had to explain the existence of Nick Fuentes to my poor normie wife) or just some kind of accelerationist/nihilist who treated Kirk’s murder like one giant shitpost and had no other ideological motivation, leftists were still the ones celebrating it. They rejoiced like the Ewoks after the Death Star blew up. So to try and paint this situation as the result of anything within the bounds of standard right-wing ideology is ignorant at best and deceitful at its worst. And Kimmel went along with it the second he got the chance, because he never misses an opportunity to stick a thumb in Trump’s eye. According to a story from Deadline, Disney even gave him a chance to walk his statement back, but he refused.

Now, even though I can’t stand Kimmel, do I think he should be taken off the air for this? No. I understand why it’s wrong and the negative precedent it sets. If Gavin Newsom assumes the presidency in 2028, I wouldn’t want him going after conservative late-night hosts (Not that there are any to begin with. If he wins I guess Greg Gutfeld better start treading lightly).

Others have argued that the precedent was already set, and that this is just a continuation of the behavior the left engaged in while they held hegemonic cultural power over the last decade. While I know there are plenty on the right who think returning the favor is justified, I’m not interested in stooping to the level of the far left and utilizing their same tactics. Others can take up that mantle if they want, it’s just not something I can bring myself to participate in. Maybe I’m being naive, but I’m content to ignore Kimmel and his unfunny, partisan nonsense.

So if my apathy isn’t fully motivated by politics, where is it coming from? What I landed on was this. I don’t care about Kimmel’s suspension because he’s already entirely irrelevant, both culturally and politically. His removal has no material impact, because it’s like he wasn’t even there in the first place.

When was the last time somebody told you about something they saw on a late-night talk show? Moreover, when did they tell you about something they saw on a late-night talk show that they watched while it was actually on TV and not shared later on YouTube or TikTok? I don’t think that’s happened to me since the first Obama administration. Speaking from my experience in the comedy world, doing a spot on late-night TV used to change people’s careers overnight. Now you’re lucky to get a few thousand Instagram followers out of it. Nobody is watching these late-night shows anymore, nor are they looking to them for any kind of political or cultural guidance.

For all the reverence they’re given when being discussed by legacy media institutions, Kimmel and the recently fired Stephen Colbert don’t matter at all. They have the viewership numbers of a B-tier Barstool podcast. Celebrities are better off going on Hot Ones when they want to promote their new movie. Kimmel and Colbert exist only for lib Boomers and Gen Xers to watch and clap along with, reminding themselves that they have the correct opinions. They do not move the needle in any meaningful way. Nothing about them threatens to undermine President Trump’s authority or power. For all of their jokes and tearful monologues over the years, what policy changes or shifts in attitude have they influenced? The answer is none. The left loses nothing with Kimmel and Colbert off the air, except for maybe two of its cringiest albatrosses.

Kimmel’s removal is also reflective of a wider shift in media power dynamics over the last two decades. Ultimately, it was Disney who decided to pull the plug on his show. Because Kimmel is employed by and beholden to a large media conglomerate, his fate was always in the hands of Bob Iger, whose primary concern is pleasing his shareholders. For a guy with his name on the marquee, Kimmel still has to answer to a lot of different people.

Contrast that with a successful YouTuber or comedian that has a large social media following. They don’t have to answer to anybody. Their power is decentralized and spread across a wide fan base, so there’s no individual platform that you can take away to punish them. Twenty years ago, you needed help from a large network or movie studio to be successful. Now they’re considered a liability. The rug can be pulled out from under you in an instant. The independent artists, who struggled to make ends meet for so many years, are now in greater control of their fate and financial futures than they’ve ever been.

Comedian Bill Burr is a great example of this. He got into hot water with the right earlier this year for aggressively criticizing Elon Musk on his podcast. The right accused Burr of selling out and/or being negatively influenced by his liberal black wife. Never mind the fact that Burr has always railed against billionaires in his specials, going all the way back to 2010’s Let It Go, and that he’s been with the same woman for his entire career. The “girlfriend” he went to the street fair with in 2008’s Why Do I Do This? is who he ended up marrying. Nothing changed with Burr, he just has more people looking at him now.

However, for all the ire he generated on the right, there was absolutely nothing they could do with it. Who could they complain to? What could they try to take away from him that one person or corporate entity was in control of? He has his own fanbase, organically grown over decades of touring. He owns his own production company. He’s in charge of his own destiny. Someone like Kimmel could only dream of having that kind of power and freedom.

I’m paraphrasing because I couldn’t find the original clip, but I remember once hearing Burr talk about cancel culture on a podcast and saying something along the lines of “My job is the punishment for most people. What are you going to do, force me to go do stand-up in strip malls again? I already did that. I don’t care.” That’s the correct attitude to have. When you’ve built something for yourself, by yourself, you can pretty much say and do whatever you want without fear of censure or bullying.

While the left doesn’t have the same organic online reach as the right, there are still popular leftists out there. Destiny and Hasan Piker draw large audiences with their livestreams. Adam Friedland gets sitting congressmen to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict with greater clarity and honesty than any mainstream journalist could ever dream of. Some of the biggest accounts here on Substack are explicitly anti-Trump. And there are certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of other left-leaning online personalities that the Millennial-and-older cohort are not aware of, simply because we’re not immersed in that world the way young people are. If someone wants to criticize the Trump administration, they have plenty of avenues to do so. The future (or, in all honesty, present) of political speech in America is in these spaces, not late-night TV.

And look, I know there’s a non-zero chance they go after someone else besides Kimmel, someone with more power and relevance. It’s a possibility, but I don’t think it’ll happen for a few reasons. First, it’s a waste of time and resources that could be better spent on more popular policy aims. Second, there’s already been robust pushback on the Kimmel situation, including from the center-right and comedian-podcasters (like Tim Dillon and Andrew Schulz) that are such a crucial piece of the MAGA coalition. If Trump keeps pressing the issue here, it’s not going to turn out well for him. Lastly, it would ultimately be counterproductive. The last thing you want to do is make a political martyr out of Joy Behar. It’s better to just let her keep saying ridiculous stuff that you can point and laugh at.

It’s my instinct that free speech will continue to hold, especially in the decentralized media channels I mentioned above. There’s no FCC that can crack down on these people. You can’t corral the internet, not fully anyway. Online leftists and liberals will continue to express their beliefs, and those beliefs will be met and challenged in the open marketplace of ideas, as they should be. That’s what moved the cultural needle back to the right after hitting Peak Woke in 2020, and it’s what I believe will continue to drive radical leftism outside of the Overton Window throughout the rest of this decade.

There’s no way that Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live, or any other mainstream comedy program were ever going to meaningfully challenge Trump and the ascendant New Right. It’s all theater with them. This is why their disappearance is immaterial. Late-night TV, like many other legacy media institutions, is dying out. If people really want to understand what’s going on in the world, they need to deal with the political and cultural realities of the present, not ones that belong to a bygone era.