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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34203 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Certainly not the 737 (unless Qatar gives it to me for free); that's significantly more than Kimmel's total audience. Probably somewhere near the Bentley; the last poll I find (2016) has 26% of his audience claiming to be conservative, and a good percentage of those would understand Fallon Kimmel (sorry, wrong Jimmy) to be referring to them even if they don't actually consider themselves MAGA.

I first heard of Kimmel when he did The Man Show way back when. I suppose his trajectory to the left is not surprising but he certainly seemed more right (in a bawdy, jokes-about-tits way) at that time.

Late night comedians always used to take potshots at whoever was in office, right up to Obama...and then suddenly the President could do no wrong. Then Obama's sainthood juxtaposed with Trump's Trumpiness happened, and "making fun of both sides" went out the window. Anyone on the right had horns drawn on their image. The rise of the Daily Show and John Stewart's (and Steven Colbert's) extremely politicized humor stirred the pot, and voilà.

Kimmel’s Karl Malone sketches were also a sword of Damocles for his career during the awokening, which made sure he stayed on the vanguard of the left.

Yeah I'm sure there's enough retirees who are habitual late night watchers and don't really agree with his politics but it's on because it's on. This stuff is the classic 'Internet resident has never heard of 18-season beige Cop Procedural that's actually the highest viewed thing in the country outside of the NFL since there's a fuckload of people in the Midwest who just don't engage online'

My boomer relatives watch reruns of pre-90's sitcoms or make fun of Finding Bigfoot and Ancient Aliens if they stay up late. They might put on a game show(usually a rerun). But I've never heard of them watching The Late Show or Jimmy Kimmel Live or any of those. They're more likely to pull up a more rural-oriented reality show as a last resort- anything from one of the seven zillion Cops knockoffs about game wardens to Swamp People.

Obviously anecdata but still. I'm sure there are Hanania-esque republicans watching these things, but socially conservative boomers have other choices of brainrot.

I've seen generally right-wing churchgoing Republican boomers habitually watching these things before, but I wouldn't characterize them as Hanania-esque so much as WALL-E background characters. They aren't watching the leftist slop because they want to temper their media diets with some leftist perspective, they're watching it because they're addicted to slop in general. It goes along with Marvel and Funko Pops and the like for them.

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