Despite the lefty, anti-Trump platitudes that come out of late night host Jimmy Kimmel’s pie hole, the comedian can still somehow make a salient point about the state of things. Remarkably, he warned that cancel culture’s current destruction of once-thought innocent pop culture staples like Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and The Muppets will get Trump elected a second time.
Wow is someone as woke as Kimmel really warning that cancel culture is going too far?
During the March 2 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host who emceed the worst-rated Emmys in history, admitted that society’s current preoccupation with neutering and/or cancelling anything that isn’t politically correct will lead us all right back into the arms of President Trump in 2024. It seems that when Trump is the end result of radical leftism, even radical leftists are inclined to pump the brakes.
Kimmel mentioned the recent spate of cultural artifacts that have found their way onto the cancel culture chopping block. He recalled how toy maker Hasbro nearly dropped the “Mr.” from its Mr. Potato Head to be more gender-inclusive (they walked back the decision,) how publishers decided to stop selling six Dr. Seuss books due to their “racially insensitive” imagery, and how Disney Plus added disclaimers to its collection of “The Muppets” movies warning about “offensive content.”
He tied all these recent incidents of cancel culture into a quip warning that they would lead to a Trump victory in 2024: “This is how Trump gets reelected, by the way. Cancel Dr. Seuss, cancel Abe Lincoln, melt down Mr. Potato Head’s private parts and throw them at the Muppets. This is his path to victory the next time around.”
Kimmel’s not totally clueless of course. It’s obvious that Trump’s victory in 2016 was a referendum against political correctness which had gummed up the political discourse and allowed the left to start controlling what people could say or think.
Reason.com Senior Editor Robby Soave wrote in 2016, “Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroy political correctness.” Soave added that voters “were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.”
It sounds like even Jimmy Kimmel recognizes this potential backlash and fears that the left’s current crusade against speech it doesn’t like – which has peaked with Big Tech companies deleting the former president’s social media account and now erasing books from Dr. Seuss – is too self-indulgent.
And it seems Kimmel also feels that cancelling things like Dr. Seuss is stupid, not just because it raises concerns about Trump 2.0, but because it’s way too over-the-top a reaction. He even joked about it, saying the culturally-approved Dr. Seuss books would feature titles like, “Horton Hears a Misogynist Joke (and Reports it to HR),” “Horton Hears a They,” and “Yertle the Gender-Fluid Turtle and Other Stories.”
Wow. Kimmel’s mocking gender neutral pronouns in network late night monologues? When that’s the case, you know things are topsy turvy.
