Jack Fowler: Jimmy Kimmel, who’s got a role in this kerfuffle—it’s not a kerfuffle. This is an assassination attempt egged on by morons. Your thoughts about Jimmy Kimmel?
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodesopens in a new tab.
Victor Davis Hanson: I mean, the worst part about it was not just what he said, that I think everybody remembers, that he set up a little skit and photoshopped himself at the dais of the White House Correspondents’ [Dinner], as if he was [President Donald] Trump or somebody.
And then they splice shots of people that he doesn’t like in the audience in unflattering ways. And you got the impression that they were actually there and listening to Jimmy Kimmel, which was kind of a dissimulation.
And then he said that, look at beautiful Melania, she has—and she was smiling—the look of a soon-to-be widow, something to that effect. In other words, Donald Trump will either die or be shot, and she’ll be probably kind of, ha ha … she’ll be happy about it. And then when he got caught on it, then he lied and said, well, I was just thinking maybe because she’s so much younger than Donald Trump and he might die. It was just pathetic.
So, there’s two issues, and that is, under the First Amendment, does he have a right to say that, as long as he doesn’t threaten the life of the president? Absolutely.
Does Disney have a prerogative? Yes. They can put him on there if they want. If they want to be that stupid. It’s their choice. And do people have a choice to lobby to get him off? Yes. There’s nothing he did, unless he threatened the president. Now, maybe he was implying that, but not as much as Madonna, I suppose.
So, he’s a bore. He is talentless. He’s a mean-spirited person, but he has a right to sound off, and people have a right to say, we don’t want to buy … we don’t want to go to Disneyland. We don’t want to buy anything that has to do with Disney. We’re done with you because you’re putting this guy on to get ratings. And the more he’s on there, the more he’s foul-mouthed, the more he hates Trump.
And you all know that if anybody, anybody said 25% of what he had said about Barack Obama, he would be yanked with a cane, in two seconds, off the stage.
You remember the clown in the Missouri State Fair, Jack? All he did was he put an Obama mask on. It wasn’t a racist blackface or anything. It was just Obama’s face. And they immediately banned him for life, as I remember, from the fair. For life. And that was their prerogative, if they wanted to do that.
But we’ll see. I think he does it because he thinks that he can’t do anything—everything else he has tried, his ratings have gone downopens in a new tab. At least they’ve gone down enough that they don’t justify his obscene salary in the cost-to-benefit analysis.
Fowler: Right.
Hanson: He’s like [Stephen] Colbert. They lose $40 or $50 million, and they pay that guy $20 million or more, $30 million. And he can’t make any money for them. So, it’s kind of like, well, we’re left-wing and we want a left-wing, you know, expensive—we can write it off or something.
But so, it’s the same thing with all these people. They have the right to say whatever they want, as long as they don’t threaten the life of the president of the United States.
But it’s so boring.
Fowler: Victor, I have not watched late-night television, not that anyway, for years.
Hanson: I haven’t either.
Fowler: And I did watch Johnny Carson, and it was just humor. And there was no sense, with him, of self-importance or self-satisfaction or smuggery.
It was just the opposite.
Hanson: Yeah. He banned people. Anybody who came in and acted like he was a prima donna, he banned. And the other thing is they asked him once, why don’t you—in that period, it got very political during the [Richard] Nixon years. And they asked him, they said, why don’t you go out? And he said, why would I want to offend half my audience?
That’s what—Michael Jordan said, the same thing, with Jordan. Why don’t you be political? And even Steve—is it Steve Kerr, the coach of the Warriors?
Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Hanson: Who could not keep his mouth shut about politics and principles and ethics. And then people reminded him, oh yeah, you go over to China and you play there and you’re part of the NBA investment, franchising Chinese teams, and they’ve got a million people in a slave labor camp. That doesn’t bother you, Mr. Morals.
And I only mention that because the other day he came out and he had an interview with a left-wing interviewer, and she was throwing these soft T-ball swings for him, you know. And he kind of said—I was really shocked—he said, I was kind of wrong, what I did. I shouldn’t get into politics. And the critics were right about the China thing. So, I was surprised. So, he got smart is what I’m trying to say.
Fowler: Yeah. Yeah.
Hanson: And late-night comedy is a joke now. They’re not very talented. Just a small audience. You got 500 channels to watch, other than that. You’ve got streaming people. We got [Greg] Gutfeld who’s out. He’s got much better ratings than these guys do. And it’s a—I don’t know.
Fowler: Well, it was—I don’t know if it was a great American institution, but once upon a time, it was fun and it was unthreatening.
Hanson: I never understood it , though, because my parents would—my dad would watch it. Or he taught at the night school, and he’d get home at 10:30, when I was in high school. And then they’d turn it on, my mom and him. That generation, those guys would stay up till 11, and then they’d watch Carson. It started at 11 after—they would watch the late-night news. There was no 10 o’clock news, then it was 11.
And then it would be over at 11:30.
Then they’d watch him for—you know, midnight. And then my dad would say, “Up and out.” He’d always imitate Dwight Eisenhower, telling everybody not to, I mean, to vote for Dick Nixon. “Victor, Alfred, Nels, get up and get out and vote for Dick Nixon. Ike, get up.” And it would be 6 o’clock in the morning.
And I thought, I just saw you when I went to bed at 10. And he stayed up till 11. All those guys did, in that generation.
Hey, we sleep when we die, as a motto for some of us.