Kimmel’s tears just made late night real
Host’s emotional monologue about newborn son’s surgery a scathing political critique
At the delicate intersection of the personal and political, Jimmy Kimmel’s tear-filled monologue Monday night was one of most heartbreaking moments on television.
Kimmel talked about his newborn son’s open-heart surgery while at the same time pointedly criticizing health-care cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
It was also funny, but it didn’t stray from the ultimate punch line, which was that health care should be affordable to all.
“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. . . . Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or something else, we can all agree on that, right?” Kimmel asked his studio audience.
His wife, Molly, had given birth to a son, William John, on April 21 when a nurse noticed that the baby had an apparent heart issue. The baby was taken to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for surgery to open a valve.
It was “the longest three hours of my life,” Kimmel said.
He made an extensive thank you to doctors, nurses and friends, even to his wife for “having sex with me” although the baby ended up with a bad heart and Kimmel’s face, he joked.
The audience was told that William is doing well, although he will need another operation in six months and a third when he is in his teens.
Kimmel, who recently hosted the Oscars, has perfected the art of the laugh-cry monologue.
It’s the second time that he’s broken down this year. In perhaps the best, and certainly the funniest television eulogy ever, he devoted his April 6 monologue to his friend, comedian Don Rickles, who died last month.
“I’m going to cry. I’m crying already,” were Kimmel’s opening lines. “I know it sounds crazy to say he was too young. But he was, because he was youthful and so funny and sharp and generous.”
In any other venue, a comic breaking down in tears is career suicide. Or at least makes him or her a target of derision. One only has to remember Ellen DeGeneres, wracked with grief and sobbing uncontrollably on her show, when she started talking about the shelter dog she adopted and had to give up, only for it to be taken away from the family she gave it to.
Unlike DeGeneres, Kimmel did not go completely off script. He remembered that his role is still to bring levity to a sometimes unfortunate and unfair world.
But certainly, comedy has taken a much more serious turn in this politically charged climate. Viewers want something more substantive, whether it be personal or within the realm of the civic. That’s evidenced by falling ratings for the celebritygames fluff of a Jimmy Fallon while the more biting satire of Stephen Colbert gains in the late show wars. Canadian Samantha Bee, meanwhile, has leapt out of cable obscurity to see her ratings more than doubling under U.S. President Donald Trump.
On his show, Kimmel called out Trump’s proposal to cut funds to the National Institutes of Health, a move that was stalled by Congress, which wanted more funding.
“We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world but, until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all,” Kimmel said. “This isn’t football . . . there are no teams. We are the team. It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”
In the sectarian world we live in, there will undoubtedly be criticism that the comedian is using his personal tragedy to make political points. That’s fair. When the most powerful man in the world is more attuned to Saturday Night Live than North Korea, you hope someone is at least paying attention. What is unchanged is that in a universe of fake news it has become harder to find a sense of humanity in the headlines.
Late night hosts have somehow become the cipher for viewers to see at least a version of that truth. Where TV anchors have steadfastly tried to be neutral, late night hosts aren’t afraid to call out the bulls---.
A lie, after all, is sometimes exactly that. Cuts in funding won’t restore health care and saying they will doesn’t make it magically happen. You don’t need Jimmy Kimmel to tell you this, but it makes it a heck of a lot funnier. twong@thestar.ca
“This isn’t football . . . there are no teams. We are the team. It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.” JIMMY KIMMEL ON U.S. HEALTH CARE