Stephen Colbert: 'Tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,' as late-night hosts weigh in on suspension

An unprecedented late-night TV suspension sparked an unprecedented late-night backlash Thursday. In a near-universal display of unanimity, every major late-night host — or at least those who still have shows — attacked ABC's "indefinite pre-emption" of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

"Tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel," said Stephen Colbert, at the outset of Thursday's edition.

On Thursday night, indeed, almost everyone was ("Gutfeld! on Fox, in full flamethrower mode, was the exception; more on that below). Across late night, or at least that part not on Fox News, the hosts rallied to Kimmel's side. NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" largely took a softer approach. Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" did a mock sendup of how an obsequious Jon Stewart might handle the news of Kimmel's suspension. And, for the first time in over a decade, Colbert even brought back his old Comedy Central doppelganger, or "my identical twin" — "Stephen Colbert," the mock right-wing host of "The Colbert Report: "Hello nation, daddy's home," he greeted viewers.

Thursday night was unprecedented but also somehow personal — a full-throated and anguished plea for freedom of speech but also for continued employment. Like Kimmel, each has come under withering fire from President Donald Trump (who erroneously called the Kimmel suspension a "cancellation" in a Thursday Truth Social posting). They have seen these posts, and they too have made fun of them. But something did change with Kimmel — a distinct sense that not one of them is safe, not one beyond the hand of the president who seemingly wants to crush them all.

They needed to acknowledge that on Thursday too. As Meyers put it, "it is a privilege and honor to call Jimmy Kimmel my friend, in the same way it's an honor to do this show every night. I wake up every day and count my blessings, that I live in a country that at least purports to value freedom of speech, and we're gonna keep doing our show the way we've always done it."

(With that line, someone off screen squeezed a whoopee cushion. This is late night — some things haven't changed at all.)

To sample these shows Thursday — or Friday morning, the way we always do — was to be left wondering what they will be doing this time a year from now. Doubtless, they were wondering the same thing. Colbert's "Late Show" will be gone entirely. Perhaps "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" too. There was something festive to all this but something terrifying too.

What would George Orwell do if he were a late night show host? Stewart offered a possible glimmer of an answer. In a rare Thursday appearance on "The Daily Show" (he regularly appears Monday), he staged his entire 23-minute opener as a sycophantic talk show guy — "It's the all-new government approved 'Daily Show,'" he began, "with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart ..."

The "Daily Show" set had been entirely remodeled — all gilded, and horrifying, the sort of late night aesthetic you might have expected to see on Soviet-era TV, if the Soviets had late-night hosts.

Fallon, another favorite Trump target, began with a typically soft slow pitch: "This morning I woke up to a hundred text messages from my father [saying] 'sorry they canceled your show ...'"

He added, "I don't know what's going on but I do know Jimmy Kimmel is a decent, loving and funny guy and I hope he comes back."

Of course he knows what's going on (who doesn't by now?) but he used the rest of his monologue to zap President Trump's trip to the U.K, with the host appearing to say one thing, while a voice-over played over his words. (Trump "looked incredibly handsome ... his face looked like a color that exists in nature ... and 'his hair looked better than Conrad from 'The Summer I Turned Pretty.'")

Then there was Fox. If late-night TV was somehow a microcosm of the rest of the country — left versus right, MAGA versus progressive — then it was left to Greg Gutfeld (not quite "late night" because "Gutfeld!" airs at 10) to assume his familiar role. He got to all the (reported) reasons behind the suspension — Kimmel's comments on Monday's edition, about Charlie Kirk's alleged killer, then acknowledged FCC commissioner Brendan Carr's threats to Disney and the licenses of its affiliate TV station base.

Gutfeld then dug in, hard: "The FCC gave Jimmy and his pathetic supporters the drug they love most — grievance. Charlie [Kirk] is no longer the victim — they are. "

Cutting to clips from rival news networks about the suspension, Gutfeld said, "Of course they're freaking out. They've been so used to getting a free pass for their propaganda but times have changed and Charlie changed them.

He added, "the media is trying to make Kimmel their Charlie Kirk, just to get the stink off of them."

(The background: On Monday and Tuesday's programs, Kimmel spoke about the reaction to the conservative activist’s killing last week, and suggested many Trump supporters were capitalizing on Kirk’s death. "The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said. Following threats by Carr Wednesday, ABC "indefinitely" suspended both show and host.)

But Thursday really belonged to Colbert — himself the only victim to date of network economics and, up until Wednesday, the only casualty of a ferocious White House blowback too. He called the suspension "blatant censorship [which] always starts small. Remember week one of his presidency? Call it 'Gulf of America?' Sure it seems small but with an autocrat, you cannot give an inch, and if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy his regime they are woefully naive and clearly have never read the children's book, 'If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel.'

"I say to Jimmy, I stand with you a hundred percent, and" — holding up the Emmy he won for best talk show Sunday — "couldn't you let me enjoy this for one week?"

Where does all this go from here? To paraphrase Carr's line from Thursday, the networks and their controlling entertainment conglomerates can do this the easy way — or the hard way. They can take the easy way, by muzzling or cancelling shows that have assumed a kind of moral authority over the past few years — the right to mock a president, any president, with impunity, which includes Gutfeld, by the way.

Meanwhile, the hard way, which also happily is also the right way — to support them and to protect them from those forces which, as Colbert noted, will not stop with a little late-night show.

Besides, show business values should always supersede the grubby spectacle of political censorship. Can you imagine the ratings (and spectacle) if Kimmel returns? Disney has hinted to some reporters that a "path" lies ahead. Our advice: Take that path now.

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