Jimmy Kimmel has been losing possible Emmy Awards to John Oliver in the category of Outstanding Variety Talk Show for years now. Since Oliver clinched the award for his work on Last Week Tonight five years ago, he hasn’t let go of it. In 2016 Kimmel invited Oliver on Jimmy Kimmel Live to celebrate Oliver’s win. “I’m just so happy to be nominated with so many other great shows,” Oliver told Kimmel five years ago. To which Kimmel shot back, “Can I just say, I don’t think you really mean that.” “Yes I do,” Oliver insisted. “No, you don’t,” Kimmel replied. Friendly rivalry? Maybe.
In 2020, Jimmy Kimmel was up against John Oliver again. This time, in the midst of a socially-distanced show, Oliver accepted his Emmy amidst a rain shower of gold confetti and from an exploding magic box, which Oliver described as “technically a small bomb.” What was in Kimmel’s magic box? He’d rather not spend time thinking of it. And while the 2020 Emmys host didn’t have to hand Oliver his Emmy in person, he did go out of his way to take a swing at him. Sure, Kimmel congratulated Oliver on his win. But after doing so, the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live threatened to report Oliver to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement on Monday, September 21.
How fans are reacting to Jimmy Kimmel's ICE joke
Twitter is outraged. “Not Jimmy Kimmel making an ICE joke… kids in cages and women being forced to have hysterectomies is not a joke,” shot back one Emmys viewer. Another suggested that Kimmel should be “kicked off the show.” A third incensed tweet, linking to an article reporting inhumane conditions at ICE facilities, noted, “Jimmy Kimmel joking about ICE is in incredibly poor taste — if you don’t know what’s happening right now in ICE facilities, you should.”
The Twitterverse isn’t, of course, particularly concerned about John Oliver. Oliver got his U.S. Citizenship in December 2019. In 2020, he went on several talk shows to talk about how difficult the path to citizenship had been. “I mean it’s really bad,” he told Jimmy Fallon in June, “and it’s bad for me … that’s what I guess is the scary canary in the coal mine, it’s bad for a white man coming from Britain who has the help of first Comedy Central and then HBO lawyers.” In his show, Oliver has also done pieces exposing the injustices in ICE immigration courts, and how dysfunctional the United States’ legal immigration system can be. Oliver has yet to comment on Kimmel’s joke.
Source: Read Full Article