Jimmy Kimmel defends being political in late-night: "I can't believe we're all not screaming 24 hours a day"

Entertainment Weekly

Kimmel defended late-night hosts doing political or topical commentary, especially when it comes to speaking out following mass shootings. "As you know it’s horrible and there’s an expectation that late-night talk shows will address these horrible things and I wish we didn’t have to but nobody is doing anything about it at all and we seem to forget about these tragedies four days after they happen," said Kimmel, while addressing the recent mass shootings this morning at the TV press tour. "My hope always in situations like that I know I don’t have any thoughts that are new or groundbreaking…but to just remind people that 97 percent of Americans believe we should have background checks for purchases at gun shows and our politicians don’t seem to care about what we think anymore.” Kimmel added: “David Letterman got that ball rolling then Jon Stewart said — and still continues to say — a lot of important things. I just don’t know what alternative there is. You watch the news all day and see what’s going on, how do you walk on stage and ignore it? I wish I could. It’s hard to talk about serious subjects… I want to be funny. When people watch a late-night television show people feel like they know you want to know what you think … I wish we didn’t have to do it so frequently.”

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• Kimmel says he won't host the Oscars again: "It is a no-win type situation...Even when it seems like it was great, you go home and some people didn’t think it was great. If you don’t care about what people think it’s OK, but I do, so it’s kind of a f*cking nightmare."
• Kimmel says he seriously considered leaving the "grind" of late-night before ABC made him feel "appreciated"