Tag Archives: kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

by BrianLaguerre99 Posted on May 2, 2017

Mother Jones

In an emotional plea to protect the Affordable Care Act, Jimmy Kimmel opened his show on Monday by sharing the news of his newborn baby’s open-heart surgery just 10 days before. The late-night host prefaced the monologue by saying the story had a “happy ending”—both the baby and mother were now home and in good health—but revealed that the heart-wrenching experience had moved him to speak out against President Donald Trump’s desire to repeal his predecessor’s signature health care law.

“We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all,” Kimmel said visibly shaken. “You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a preexisting condition.”

“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.”

The impassioned monologue was roundly praised by audience members and Democratic officials online. Barack Obama even weighed in to thank Kimmel for sharing his personal story:

Kimmel’s powerful address comes amid the Trump administration’s second harried attempt to dismantle Obamacare, after Republicans pulled their repeal bill in March.

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Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

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Are Your Favorite Late-Night Shows Sexist?

by LateshaGriggs Posted on July 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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The controversy over a recent Daily Show tweet and the departure of one of the show’s rising comics has put a spotlight on how few women have roles on screen and behind the camera at television’s top late-night comedy shows.

And when Mother Jones did spot-check of several programs’ credits, the numbers read like a terrible punchline that female comics know all too well. While Full Frontal‘s Samantha Bee and past late-night hosts such as Chelsea Handler have helped blaze the path for women, the people penning the jokes for the most popular shows are still overwhelmingly male.

At eleven of television’s most popular late-night programs, just 30 of 175 writers were women, according to credits for episodes that aired this year. In other words, less than 18 percent of late-night comedy writers at the most popular sketch and talk shows are women. That is significantly lower than the number of female television writers overall, according to a study published earlier this year by the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism: In broadcast TV, women make up 31.6 percent of writers, compared with 28.5 percent in cable and 25.2 percent for shows that are streamed over the internet. Film still trails dismally behind—only 10.8 percent of writers are female. Though female writers find more work in television than their counterparts in film, the gender imbalance in comedy programming has continued to lag.

University of Southern California MDSC Initiative

This issue came up again after Monday’s historic US Supreme Court decision, which struck down several restrictive abortion measures in Texas. People took to social media to express relief about the ruling, which will prevent the state’s remaining abortion clinics from shutting down. It came as a surprise to some fans when The Daily Show With Trevor Noah posted what some said was a rather tone-deaf tweet.

The tweet, meant to show support for the ruling, did not land well with Twitter users on both sides of the abortion debate. One even suggested The Daily Show could avoid snafus like this by hiring more female writers. The Daily Show did not issue an apology, but it did post a follow-up tweet for clarification:

That Twitter user who clamored for more women writers raises a good point. Although The Daily Show is known for left-leaning jokes and its snarky take on American politics, the backlash to this tweet is an example of what can happen when a group of mostly male writers try to make a joke about women’s issues without much female input. Now, even fewer women will be on the show’s payroll. On Wednesday, Daily Show darling and four-year correspondent Jessica Williams announced she would be leaving the show after this week to begin work on a pilot. Williams, the youngest correspondent to join the show, inked a development deal with Comedy Central in March.

There are currently eight regular correspondents on the program, and after Williams’ departure, there will only be one female correspondent on a team of seven. The female correspondents are not credited as writing staff. Nor are the three women who are listed as semi-regular contributors on the Daily Show’s website. That means the ratio of male to female writers at The Daily Show is not any better than it is for similar programs: There are five times as many men as there are women in The Daily Show‘s writers’ room.

We took a look at the closing credits of the recent episodes of the most popular late-night shows. To get the most accurate count possible, we looked at the credits of each show or the Writers Guild of America website to verify the names of every writer. We used Twitter and IMDB to verify the gender of each writer.

Late Night with Seth Meyers, as of June 2016 (NBC):

Total credited writers: 17

Men: 14

Women: 3

Saturday Night Live, as of May 2016 (NBC):

Total credited writers: 24

Men: 20

Women: 4

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, as of June 2016: (Comedy Central)

Total credited writers: 19

Men: 16

Women: 3

The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, as of June 2016 (Comedy Central)

Total credited writers: 15

Men: 11

Women: 4

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, as of June 2016 (HBO)

Total credited writers: 11

Men: 9

Women: 2

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, as of June 2016 (CBS)

Total credited writers: 18

Men: 16

Women: 2

The Late Late Show With James Corden, as of June 2016 (CBS)

Total credited writers: 14

Men: 11

Women: 3

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, as of June 2016 (TBS)

Total credited writers: 9

Men: 5

Women: 4

Real Time With Bill Maher as of June 2016 (HBO)

Total credited writers: 10

Men: 10

Women: 0

*Recent episode credits were unavailable for Conan, The Tonight Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. The following numbers are from the 2016 Writers Guild Awards nominations.

Conan, as of December 2015 (TBS)

Total credited writers: 17

Men: 15

Women: 2

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as of December 2015 (NBC)

Total credited writers: 21

Men: 18

Women: 3

Jimmy Kimmel Live, as of December 2014 (more recent list unavailable; not included in tally) (ABC)

Total credited writers: 16

Men: 13

Women: 3

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Are Your Favorite Late-Night Shows Sexist?

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Hillary Clinton Is Serious About UFOs

by AliChoatevkr Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Once again, Hillary Clinton has pledged that she will discover as much as possible about government involvement in UFO research and share the information with the American people. Clinton was on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show Thursday night, and Kimmel brought up the fact that he’d asked former President Bill Clinton about his efforts on UFO disclosure during his administration. (Kimmel has also asked President Barack Obama about UFOs.)

“He said that he did do that and he didn’t find anything,” Kimmel said. Hillary Clinton replied, “Well, I’m going to do it again.”

This is the second time during the last few months that Clinton has said she wants to tackle this issue. In late December, Clinton told a New Hampshire reporter that she thought “we may have been visited already,” and that she would “get to the bottom” of the issue if elected president. Three weeks ago, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, an X-Files fan and longtime Clinton aide, told a Las Vegas television station that he’s pressed Clinton on the issue.

“I’ve talked to Hillary about that, this is a little bit of a cause of mine which is that people really want to know what the government knows, and there are still classified files that could be declassified,” Podesta said at the time.

And while many dismiss UFOs with eye-rolling skepticism, Clinton showed Kimmel that she’s familiar with the more scientific side of the issue, correcting his use of the term “UFO.”

“There’s a new name—it’s ‘unexplained aerial phenomenon,'” she said. “UAP, that’s the latest nomenclature.”

UAP is the term used by the scientific and evidence-based wing of the UFO research community, and is an attempt by those interested in the issue to get away from the derision and mockery that the term “UFO” typically provokes. When Podesta was interviewed in Las Vegas, he said, “I think I’ve convinced her that we need an effort to kind of go look at that and declassify as much as we can so that people have their legitimate questions answered and more attention and more discussion about unexplained aerial phenomena can happen without people who are in public life who are serious about this being ridiculed.”

As Mother Jones has reported, the Clintons’ interest in UFOs and information about US government involvement goes back at least until the mid-1990s. During that time, the late Laurance Rockefeller, who was a UFO enthusiast, approached the White House and pushed for the information to be released. Documents released about Rockefeller’s meetings under a Freedom of Information Act request show that Hillary Clinton was involved in those talks. She met with Rockefeller in August 1995 at his Wyoming ranch and probably discussed the issue, according to the FOIA documents. The effort, known by some as the “Rockefeller Initiative,” has been the subject of several big stories lately, including a recent Mother Jones profile of Stephen Bassett, the nation’s only registered extraterrestrial-issue lobbyist.

Hillary Clinton with Laurance Rockefeller at his Wyoming ranch in 1995 Grant Cameron/Stephen Bassett

Last night, Clinton told Kimmel that anything that can be released should be released. “I would like us to go into those files and hopefully make as much of that public as possible,” she said. “If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there.”

“What if there is something there?” asked Kimmel.

“Well, if there is something there,” she replied, “unless it’s a threat to national security, I think we ought to share it with the public.”

Watch the exchange:

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Hillary Clinton Is Serious About UFOs

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