On Thursday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live, the ABC host reveled in Ted Cruz's Twitter reaction to his routine mocking Cruz's face as looking like an ugly blobfish at the NBA playoffs in Houston. Cruz (quote-tweeting our NewsBusters article) challenged Kimmel to a one-on-one basketball game for charity. Kimmel accepted, and repeated his joke about Cruz as a blobfish, and as Herman Munster.
We were thrilled when Cruz quote-tweeted our blog about Kimmel mocking Cruz's face and his basketball savvy.
Kimmel replied: "I like this idea. I’ll accept on one condition - we both wear VERY short shorts."
Cruz retorted: "As Borat demonstrated conclusively, NOBODY wants to see that. And ABC would probably be fined by the FCC! How ‘bout this: you dress yourself, I’ll do the same. Play to 10 (by ones), win by 2."
Kimmel then joked "Crop tops?" Cruz said "Never mind the dress code. We can play to 10, or 21, or 50, your choice. @adamcarolla can provide color commentary...." Kimmel recounted all of this on video (but aww, where is the NewsBusters link in the senator's first tweet, ABC? I suppose that would be too much to ask.)
Airing this exchange shows Cruz as a good sport, but Kimmel repeated the joke about the blobfish and then added that he Googled "how to guard a blobfish." He joked that if they played to 50, "we'll both be dead," and joked maybe "I sacrifice myself for the good of the land."
“Why he wants to do this, I have no idea!” Kimmel told his crowd. “You really want to play basketball against a talk show host? You already lost an election to a reality show host, isn’t that enough?”
He added “Who needs to watch LeBron James and Kevin Durant again when we could instead focus on two out-of-shape white men in their 50s with little to no athletic ability instead? So yes, Ted Cruz. I do accept your challenge.”
"I know you played basketball when you were younger. I saw a picture of you from your high school yearbook" -- and then Kimmel showed a black-and-white photo of Herman Munster in a basketball uniform. First, Cruz was Grandpa Munster, and now he's Herman?
