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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised a viral satirical X thread about Stephen Colbert, late-night TV and the decline of liberal comedy Saturday, using the post to take aim at Jimmy Kimmel as “The Late Show” era comes to an end.
Kennedy framed the post as an explanation for why Kimmel has drawn backlash from conservatives over comments about his job as a comedian.
“Superb dissection of the shocking collapse of liberal comedy,” Kennedy wrote. “This is the best explanation of how we’ve reached the nader where Late Night host Jimmy Kimmel can say ‘It’s not my job to be funny.’ As this author shows, he was hired as a comedian but he made himself a priest.”
The post Kennedy amplified was a satirical piece, written by Peter Girnus, who wrote the post as a fictional “Senior Vice President of Late Night Strategy at CBS.”
Girnus centered the satire on Colbert’s shift from his Comedy Central character to his late-show persona.
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“We killed the character and put the real man on stage. The real man was a lecturer. Earnest. Thoughtful. Correct about everything,” Girnus wrote. “Correct is not funny.”
After Kennedy’s praise, Girnus followed up by arguing that the problem was not just one host, but a culture that punished jokes outside liberal orthodoxy.
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“Liberal comedy has become an excommunication system working as designed,” Girnus wrote.
The broader fight came after Kimmel defended his political commentary last month on “IMO,” the podcast hosted by former first lady Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Kimmel said he bristles when critics tell him his job is simply to make people laugh, Fox News Digital reported.
“Don’t tell me what my job is,” Kimmel said. “My job is whatever I decide my job is or whatever my employer allows me to do.”
“I love when the audience laughs. There’s nothing that’s more exciting to me than that.”
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Girnus’ response framed that tension as evidence that late-night comedy had become a credentialing ritual for liberal viewers rather than unpredictable entertainment.
“An echo chamber cannot produce comedy,” Girnus wrote. “Comedy is the act of saying what the room does not expect. An echo chamber is a room that punishes the unexpected.”
CBS announced in July 2025 that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” would end in May 2026 and that the franchise would be retired.
The network called the move “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and said it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to ABC for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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