Jimmy Kimmel probably wouldn’t be happy to be called “the most important host in late-night”

Vulture

Mark Harris says the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host has become the “most unlikely spokesman for a nation baffled and frustrated by Trump and the Republican Congress in 2017.” Kimmel’s insistence that he’s “not great with this kind of thing” is exactly why he is late-night’s most important host, says Harris. “His reluctance — he didn’t ask for this — is what makes him so essential,” Harris adds. “In politics, elected officials fear few things more that the swing voter, or the voter who goes from indifferent to galvanized. That does not describe Seth Meyers, who gets into politics with welcome precision and terrier avidity, or John Oliver, who makes a banquet of wonkish specifics. Kimmel doesn’t — or didn’t until this year. His awkwardness — his voice quavers when he’s angry or upset, he can ramble, and every word isn’t perfectly chosen — is the awkwardness of someone who is awakening to the fact that 'politics' can’t be walled off in an area that’s separate from personal experience.”

ALSO:

• Kimmel has “found and tentatively occupied the space that remains stubbornly vacant since the back-to-back retirements of David Letterman and Jon Stewart in 2015”
• Kimmel expected heavy blowback from conservative and pro-Trump voices
• Kimmel on Tuesday blasted those saying it's "too soon" to talk gun control: "It’s not too soon for us, because we’re Americans"
• Kimmel emergence may be due to the likelihood that “late night’s chorus of desk-pounding satirists are starting to drown each other out”
• Politifact fact-checks Kimmel’s gun violence monologue
• Fox News: “Jimmy Kimmel's advocacy for liberal causes on late night show not against current FCC rules”
• Jimmy Kimmel and brother Jonathan are developing The Nepotist, a nepotism comedy, for Fox