NEW YORK — If the latest Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare doesn’t work, it may become known as the Jimmy Kimmel Non-Law.
The comic’s withering attacks this week have transformed the debate over the bill sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy and, in the process, illustrated how thoroughly late-night talk shows have changed and become homes for potent points of view.
“Late-night has really become an important part of the civic conversation,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture.
Kimmel’s monologues Tuesday and Wednesday were deeply personal. His newborn son underwent surgery in May for a heart defect and faces two more operations.
He felt a sense of personal betrayal from Sen. Bill Cassidy, who was on the show this spring after Kimmel talked about his son’s medical problems, and felt that Cassidy lied to him about Republican health care plans. Cassidy said the comedian was misinformed.
Kimmel’s initial speech on his ABC show, where a phone number to Congress was flashed on the screen to urge viewers to get involved, quickly spread online and became a focus of news coverage. Cassidy was asked to respond to Kimmel when he appeared Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, despite his own doubts about the Republican bill, balked in an MSNBC appearance at being compared to Kimmel. “He’s not a serious person,” Christie said.
But Kimmel was deadly serious.
“Before you post a nasty Facebook message saying I’m politicizing my son’s health problems, I want you to know I am politicizing my son’s health problems because I have to,” Kimmel said.
After Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade criticized members of the Hollywood elite “like comedian Jimmy Kimmel for pushing their politics on the rest of the country,” Kimmel blasted him the next night as a “phony little creep” who “whenever I see him, kisses my ass like a little boy meeting Batman.”
“He’s got a candor that we don’t often see,” Thompson said. “Certainly not from comedians but also from political leaders.”
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