Jimmy Kimmel’s return is a minor victory – but a victory nonetheless

The monkey’s paw was withering again this week: if we could choose just one reversal in fortune for the administration, did it have to be the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel? It amazes my friends and I, middle millennials who came of age during a time of relative progressivism that now sadly appears to be a mere blip, that the milquetoast mores of a liberal late-night TV show host are now so outre that they warrant censure, and more importantly our defence.

Not so long ago, our politics would have led us to denounce such people for their meagre and ineffectual nods toward disobedience, but now even jocular disobedience has gravitas and must be reckoned with.

Tuesday night saw Kimmel return to ABC, an interesting resurrection following the decision of Disney executives to indefinitely cancel his show days beforehand. The move followed a furore involving the current rightwing cause célèbre, the assassinated commentator Charlie Kirk. Kimmel spoke in his monologue on Monday, incorrectly as it transpired, about the supposed politics of Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson. “The Maga gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said.

Kimmel kicked off his highly anticipated return opening monologue to a euphoric, chanting audience with a bit – “Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted” – before a turn to the sincere. Choking a little with emotion, he clarified that he had not wished to mock Kirk’s murder.

“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human, and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”

He went on, during the extended segment that ran to almost 30 minutes, to thank the Disney executives who had reinstated him, his fellow late-night hosts who had spoken up for him, and to assert the national values that protect free speech; a comedian being attacked for laughing at the president is anti-American, he said.

The only guest of the return show was Glen Powell, a fittingly interchangeable leading man who didn’t much detract from the focus, and to whom Kimmel apologised for getting him “into the middle of all this”. Sarah McLachlan, who had cancelled an earlier performance before Kimmel’s reinstatement in protest at his dismissal closed the evening with a new song.

It was a shame that the monologue that led to his brief cancellation included the inciting gag about political blame, when there is so much about the Maga response to lampoon with full righteousness. Its next line was one making fun of Trump’s distracted response when offered condolences by a journalist – when he trailed off the subject of Kirk’s death and began to describe a new ballroom being installed in the White House.

Later, Trump would describe the week as “a time of healing, a time of whatever”, in yet another unforgettable masterpiece of comic economy. There is, indeed, nothing funny about the murder of a young father, but there was absolutely something funny about the hideous spectacle of the Trump-led memorial that followed it – the president standing next to the visibly distraught grieving widow and dancing in time to the beats of the anthems being bellowed out alongside firework displays in proper fascistic fashion.

It is also telling that Trump has such a pronounced fixation on late-night hosts, when, as he points out, their influence is waning. Why not, though, when he would have made a pretty good one himself? His careless delivery is chilling as a leader (when asked how he would unite a divided country following the Kirk murder, he answered without pause: “I couldn’t care less”) but on The Tonight Show would make for a thrilling dynamic. Picture that sort of throwaway desultory line coming up against the celebrities who are more typically embarrassingly fawned over on these shows – gold.

Kimmel’s return is a victory, as minor as it may feel. It’s humiliating for Maga, who were not subtle in their strong-arm threats, and an encouraging sign that total deference is not fashionable, at least not yet. It’s possible, as many are saying, that the Disney executives who reversed their decision are doing so only for the sake of optics after the world turned to see what looked a lot like state censorship, but if the optics of kowtowing remain more embarrassing than the optics of compliance, that is in itself something to celebrate.

Megan Nolan is a writer living in New York. Her most recent novel, Ordinary Human Failings, was nominated for the Orwell prize for political fiction.

Photograph by Randy Holmes/AP