If the joke Jimmy Kimmel said about First Lady Melania Trump is considered a promotion of violence, then what about all of the ugly, hateful comments made by MAGA types when Joe Biden was president?
We live in a country now that is blind to hypocrisy and has lost its collective sense of humor. A couple of days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Jimmy Kimmel was acting like he was host of the event and pretending to look out on the crowd there he said that the First Lady was beautiful and had the “glow of an expectant widow.” Kimmel said he was referring to the president’s age and nothing else. After the shooting at the WHCD there were public attacks on Kimmel as if his comment was related to another attempt on the president’s life. Yet, there was no criticism from the same people for WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who told Fox News the day of the shooting that “there will be some shots fired in the room.” Like other rational people, I thought she was talking about the sharp, derogatory comments that would be made - not that gun shots would actually be fired. Another example of the hypocrisy we are living with in America.
Defining a comment or a joke as “promoting violence” gives it more power. The promotion of violence is not acceptable and it’s easy to win support when you proclaim that something amounts to a “promotion of violence.”
The joke from Jimmy Kimmel was about the First Lady and the president’s age. In fact, today the president made a comment about dying before his wife and said he was sorry but that’s the way it will be. The First Lady is 56 and the president turns 80 in June. Trump’s comment supported the Kimmel joke as just a joke. Jokes are based on some aspect of reality and it is reasonable to believe that the president will die before his wife. It’s difficult to support any argument that Kimmel’s joke was a “promotion of violence.”
And what about all of those who made fun of Joe Biden? I heard ugly, hateful comments about Joe Biden on my talk show on WWL in New Orleans. Should those comments be considered a “promotion of violence” and should those people be criticized as viciously as Jimmy Kimmel has been criticized? Based on today’s standards - YES!
There is no honor in being a hypocrite. Being a hypocrite is actually a very degrading thing to say about someone because hypocrites are not willing to accept that they are wrong and live life with a double standard.
If you argue that Jimmy Kimmel was a threat to the President of the United States, then think about all you said about Joe Biden. Should you have been considered a threat to him?
