Jimmy Kimmel broke his silence after his brief suspension from the airwaves, posting a picture to Instagram on Tuesday of a Hollywood figure who once described himself as being on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”
Kimmel shared a photo of himself and Norman Lear, the television producer who was best known for his progressive activism. Lear died in 2023 at age 101. The late-night host captioned the photo, which features his arm around Lear, “Missing this guy today.”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is set to return to ABC on Tuesday night after the network suspended the show over what it described as “ill-timed” comments from Kimmel on the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
During his Sept. 15 show, Kimmel criticized some Republicans for how they were responding to Kirk’s killing.
“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 during his monologue.
Disney’s ABC said last week that it was pre-empting Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” following threats of regulatory action from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr.
Many, including a handful of celebrities, expressed outrage toward ABC for choosing to pull Kimmel’s show following Carr’s threats.
After increasing public pressure and calls to boycott, Disney announced Monday that Kimmel would return to late night. In its announcement, the company did not address the concerns that Kimmel’s freedom of speech rights had been violated.
Kimmel had not spoken publicly about the suspension since it happened.
The late-night host has described Lear as one of his idols.
Lear developed now-beloved sitcoms such as “All in the Family” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time.” His work was defined by being unafraid to tackle social issues long considered taboo.
Over six decades, Lear’s work took up racism, sexism, the women’s liberation movement, antisemitism, abortion, homophobia, the Vietnam War and class conflict.
Lear said his work put him on Nixon’s “enemies list” because he was angry about Lear “glorifying” homosexuality on TV, according to Smithsonian magazine. He appeared delighted to learn of Nixon’s reaction to his work after a tape leaked of the president ranting about “All in the Family.”
“I thought it was delicious that in the Oval Office — I didn’t care for what he was saying, I didn’t care for that particular president in any shape, way or form — but to hear the president and his confederates talking about that show and at some length, reasoning about it and comparing it to the Greek civilization, that could not have been more interesting,” he told Talking Points Memo in 2015.
In a 2016 interview with “Democracy Now!” Lear compared Nixon’s rant about his show in the leaked tapes to being “Trumpish.” He also said that he remembered his civics education as a child, which taught him that he was protected by the Founding Fathers.
“But when I was a boy, I learned to love my Declaration of Independence — and I underline ‘my’ — and my Constitution and my Bill of Rights, because they were the protections Americans needed in a free society where everybody is equal under the law,” Lear said at the time.