So Much Winning

Over the past several days late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and early night opinion show host Sean Hannity traded insults about a joke Kimmel told about First Lady Melania Trump's accent.

The fight happened on Twitter, a fitting venue for the intellects involved. Hannity called Kimmel out for what he thought were cheap shots on Mrs. Trump for supposedly giving the impression of greater involvement in the White House Easter Egg hunt than she had. Of course, few First Ladies have had direct involvement in preparing for this event -- can you picture Hillary Clinton or Nancy Reagan dyeing the eggs or hiding them on the White House lawn? But things that any president or president's family member might have done that excited little comment are an Abomination unto the nostrils of Decency when done by a Trump and so fair game for mockery.

It'd be nice if they were fair game for humor, but one learns not to ask more of Kimmel than he can deliver; instead he felt that insinuating Hannity was a homosexual was a proper form of insult.

Hannity, for his part, opened by equating Kimmel's blatantly sexist middle school sniggery from his old The Man Show with the kind of behavior of which Harvey Weinstein is accused. He skipped any kind of connection with the kind of behavior that got his former studio co-employee Bill O'Reilly sued and fired, perhaps because he defended O'Reilly now and again in the midst of that mess.

It might have been nice if Hannity had used his show's resources to exploring exactly how commentary and jokes against presidential families have varied over the years, but again one knows not to ask more of him than he can deliver.

It seems as though Kimmel has brought about an end to the feud with an apology, as noted in the story above, although it is somewhat back-handed and it's snarky enough to make one question his sincerity. Admittedly he's a Hollywood celebrity, so questioning his sincerity is an early move in the game, but still.

I'm kind of sad that the feud is over. Not because it was creating a spectacle worth watching; neither man demonstrated any more creativity than their careers have given us a right to expect. In any event it was all happening on Twitter so I had just about zero regular exposure to it until someone without enough to do wrote a news story on it.

No, I'm sad because if it had escalated enough we might have been able to get together a campaign to put both men on a deserted island to hash things out for good. Who do I think would have won in a fair fight between Hannity and Kimmel?

We would. Remember, it's a deserted island, and I didn't say anything about going back and picking them up.