On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel will walk back onto the stage where he has spent two decades navigating America’s moods. This time will be different. He returns not as the comic jester who skewers the day’s absurdities, but as the man at the center of them — reinstated by ABC after a suspension that became a story more combustible than the comments that prompted it.
The outrage machine spun in all directions. His words about the attempt to label Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin as something other than what he was — a man with clear leftist sympathies — sparked fury. ABC, feeling the heat, pulled him off the air. Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner at the FCC, went further, hinting at investigatory retribution if the network failed to punish him. For a moment, the balance of cultural power tilted away from on-air talent and toward Washington’s corridors of regulatory influence.
But then, a reversal. A few conversations between Disney and Kimmel, a recalibration by the media conglomerate, and now the host is back. Suddenly, the return of a late-night host to television, an otherwise benign and predictable display, feels like a national event. It will no doubt be a vast and fairly bipartisan gathering in our otherwise splintered media ecosystem. Millions will tune in. For the rare chance to hear a man decide, in real time, how he will speak to a country on edge.
The possibilities fan out in every direction. Will he apologize? Will he rail against Trump and his allies? Will he attempt the high-wire act of doing both? It is a million-dollar question, but more fragile still: a moment to decide what kind of country we see reflected back at us.
Our politics feel like a wound that refuses to close, raw and exposed. Millions of viewers, each holding their own anxieties, their own grief, their own sense of outrage, will be watching.
Kimmel is well suited for this moment, if he wants it. His gift has always been more than punchlines. He is an empath in a medium often starved for empathy. His monologues on health care, gun violence, or personal tragedy have drawn tears — his, ours — because they carried the weight of lived experience. He has shown us that a late-night host can be a vessel not only for laughter, but for grief and compassion.
And so, there is a different kind of opportunity here. Not to bludgeon the administration with tired jokes. Not to take a victory lap for surviving cancellation. But to choose the harder path — the one Erika Kirk chose when she forgave the man who murdered her husband, an act of public grace that stunned even the cynical.
Imagine holding your children, your heart broken, and speaking words that the rest of the world struggles even to imagine. In that voice, the temperature of the room dropped, and for a moment, partisanship gave way to humanity.
Kimmel cannot replicate that, but he can learn from it. He can own his missteps. He can acknowledge that in rushing to frame the politics of the shooting, he fell into the same trap of those he was criticizing. He can use his platform not to score, but to steady.
I have no skin in this game, but I know how starved I am to hear a public voice choose something other than mockery or fury. It would be easy for Kimmel to sneer. What’s harder — and more necessary — is to open a hand instead of throwing a fist.
Television has lost much of its communal power, fractured by streaming and endless feeds. But every so often, a moment arises when the glare of the spotlight still cuts through the noise. This is one of those moments. If Kimmel lashes out, it will be forgotten in hours, another splash of fuel on the bonfire of outrage. But if he turns toward something higher — something inclusive, something generous — his words could outlast the ratings bump. They could remind us that even now, in a culture drowning in invective, grace remains possible.
Burt Bacharach once asked what the world needs now. His answer, then as now, was simple: love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. On Tuesday night, it will be Jimmy Kimmel’s turn to decide if he can offer a measure of what we so sorely need.
The post Jimmy Kimmel’s Return: A Rare Opportunity for Grace, Empathy and Healing first appeared on Mediaite.
