Kimmel vs. Hannity: No laughing matter

Pop quiz: What college major would provide an aspiring journalist the best opportunity? Communications? Broadcast journalism? News production?

None of the above. Instead, if you want to be taken seriously in today’s news industry, there’s only one course to master. Comedy 101. Apparently, we now take latenight comedians so seriously, construing their every word as gospel truth, that we’ve elevated them to the same level as news anchors. As proof, look at the firestorm that has enveloped talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel after he made a funny about the First Lady’s accent.

This is no joke. There’s been an all-out war between Kimmel and Fox’s Sean Hannity over a simple one-liner. To be even having a discussion, let alone a national debate, over a harmless joke is so mindboggling that, if someone scripted it, he’d be laughed out of the room.

It all began when Kimmel, whose show is predicated on comedy, made a quick joke about Melania Trump’s accent. After a clip of her reading a book, where she pronounces “this and that” as “dees and dat,” Kimmel turned to his Mexican-American sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, and quipped: “Guillermo, you know what this means? You could be first lady of the United States.”

If you’re waiting for the rest of what Hannity thought was beyond-the-pale offensive, sorry to disappoint, but that’s it.

So rather than laughing at (or simply ignoring) the joke, Hannity unleashed hell on Kimmel. Even before Sean’s outburst, Fox aired an entire “Fox And Friends” segment with host Ainsley Earhardt, replete with a guest contributor, to bash Kimmel.

A cable network thought it a good use of airtime to whip up anger because a comedian had the “gall” to actually tell a joke? This from a network that prides itself – in name only – as being “fair and balanced.”

Hannity then jumped into the fray like it was World War III, referring to the joke as “brutal,” and calling Kimmel a “despicable disgrace,” “a--clown,” “a------,” “pervert,” “Harvey Weinstein Jr.,” and “racist,” while airing clips from Kimmel’s “The Man Show” – a program that ran in 1999. To “get back” at Kimmel, Hannity resurrected a nearly two-decadeold comedy show for “gotcha” material, demonstrating he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

The hysteria that Fox whipped up helped fuel an online petition that garnered at least 50,000 signatures calling for the boycotting of Kimmel’s show.

Kimmel made a mistake by engaging Hannity’s lunacy via Twitter. Hannity, who continues to promulgate crazy conspiracy theories, lost whatever relevance he had long ago, save for the rabid right. Kimmel’s jousting gave Hannity a level of credibility he did not deserve.

The back-and-forth escalated and became personal on both sides, with Kimmel joking about Hannity being physically close to the president. That, in turn, created controversy within the gay community (again – it was joke), and it all went downhill from there. Finally, Kimmel, likely under pressure from parent company Disney, issued a semi-apology and ended the feud.

Disney and Kimmel should have simply said, “It’s a comedy show. It was a joke. Get over yourself.” But corporate intelligence is an oxymoron.

Where are we going when our hyper-sensitivity no longer allows us to laugh at ourselves?

You can tell a lot about a society by its sense of humor. The strong ones have the ability to laugh, poke fun, and engage in self-deprecating humor, made possible by an innate confidence and the ability not to take itself too seriously.

Conversely, societies that live in fear, get constantly “offended” and attempt to sanitize everything with the goal of complete homogenization put themselves on the path to self-destruction. Political correctness rules the day, common sense goes out the window, and a bitter resentment grows as people feel they can only express themselves behind closed doors, fearful of being labeled insensitive and bigoted.

This is no laughing matter. It’s time to grow a spine and push back against this rising tide of insanity. No more backing down for innocent jokes, and no more apologies to people whose entire existence is predicated upon being “offended.”

Jimmy Kimmel, keep the laughs coming and show the Hannitys of the world that the real joke’s on them!