You knew someone would joke about Jackson's death (and you kinda knew it would be Kimmel)
I was on Twitter all night last night, and there were actually a lot of Michael Jackson jokes mixed in with the tributes and the breaking news tweets. I was wondering if the late night talk shows would either talk about Jackson passing away or if they'd make a joke about it or both. I especially wondered about Jimmy Kimmel, because he has not only made a ton of jokes about Jackson in the past (as they all did), but he actually had correspondent Jake go out to events like the Jackson trial and act like a nut. Here's Kimmel's monologue from last night.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-26-2009 @ 1:00PM
Draven Michaels said...
I was watching Jimmy Kimmel and to be honest after his jokes I just had to turn the channel. I don't find someone dying to be funny in the slightest and to joke about it on the very day it occurred - only hours, was in poor taste. I might just go as far to say that I think last night was my last night of watching Jimmy Kimmel.
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6-26-2009 @ 1:05PM
Mike said...
Definitely. He goes too far, and most of what he says and does seems to be not so much "funny" as "desperately trying to be funny".
6-26-2009 @ 1:03PM
Eric said...
As for the other late-night shows, I suspect there was no mention of Jackson's passing because they were taped before the official confirmation of death. I did notice that Jimmy Fallon's show began with a brief message that the show was taped at 5:30 p.m. EST, which normally never precedes the show.
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6-26-2009 @ 1:10PM
Hillary said...
I've been wondering about the ethics of telling MJ jokes now that he's gone. There's something morally queasy about it, and yet if we'd tell them while he was alive... well, I think we'd be hypocrites to suddenly behave all piously. We're talking about it on Everyday Ethics:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/everydayethics/2009/06/are-michael-jackson-jokes-suddenly-bad.html
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6-26-2009 @ 1:17PM
Tony said...
A funny joke by a funny comedian. People need to seperate comedy from life. Lighten up.
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6-26-2009 @ 1:30PM
cherries said...
Kimmel is a complete ass, always has been. Can't stand him, never could, and I'd really love to see him taken off the air. He's a creep. A nasty, tasteless, jerk-off creep.
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6-26-2009 @ 1:37PM
Jojee said...
That was not so bad. He was speaking the truth. People are offended by truth?
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6-26-2009 @ 1:40PM
MosquitoControl said...
Does Michael Jackson really deserve our respect?
Plenty of jokes were made about Steve Irwin, a man that never hurt anyone.
Why should we show more deference to Jackson?
And since when is absurdity not funny?
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6-26-2009 @ 2:06PM
Chris said...
I didn't think the jokes were that bad. Pretty tame, actually. He said some pretty nice things about him, too. The way I see it, it's the job of a comedy late night show host to make light of current events, and this is probably the biggest entertainment story of the year. So it shouldn't be off limits, and as long as Kimmel's not talking shit about the dead (and he isn't, really), then good on him for moving things along.
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6-26-2009 @ 1:47PM
Butters said...
Brilliant!
The King is dead, long live King Jimmy.
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6-26-2009 @ 2:52PM
izikavazo said...
I was surprised how well he avoided controversy there. Micheal Jackson is still ripe for jokes even if he's dead. But instead he went after the craziness of the media and the fans. I think he did good.
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6-26-2009 @ 2:40PM
sabeset7 said...
Did any of the comedians say anything negative about Farrah Fawcett? She also died yesterday and her life was a little out there also. The media played up her life in a big way all night so where were the disrespectful jokes about her? This company has gone to the dogs. Where is the compassion and respect for the sacredness of human life. This man was someone's son, brother, father and uncle. They were in shock and mourning yesterday. We spread enough negative gossip about him when he was alive. Give the man a break. It's over. It really is over.
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6-26-2009 @ 3:11PM
Tim said...
Please, Fawcett doesn't even remotely come close to Jackson's freakishness. There's no humour in making fun of her, Jackson on the other hand...
6-26-2009 @ 6:59PM
ac said...
It didn't think the jokes were offensive at all. He wasn't doing molestation jokes, just jokes about some of the absurd reactions to his death.
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6-26-2009 @ 3:32PM
funley47 said...
Yeah. This wasn't really bad at ALL. It's his job to talk about what went on in current events and I think he did it well. The one joke that came close to being offensive was a very old joke.
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6-26-2009 @ 3:40PM
Midnight13 said...
I'd actually think Letterman would say something about Fawcett's death because she had a notable appearance on his show a few years back. Another one of those odd/uncomfortable interviews that for some reason always happen on Letterman.
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6-26-2009 @ 10:23PM
Michael Jackson Death Jokes said...
It's interesting how many of the jokes currently making the rounds are simple turns on the jokes that were told during his life. Almost all deal with child molestation, although a secondary theme is is his racial transformation and a tertiary theme his extensive plastic surgery. I've been collecting these jokes in this crowdsourcing experiment and all of the ones that have been contributed to the comments thus far relate to the molestation theme.
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7-03-2009 @ 4:52AM
Jason said...
Yeah tim, jojee, Butter, MosquitoControl you all truly are morons..... These idiots did nothing but portray him as things that he is not and showed how they are afraid of what they don't understand. This coming from a guy who had r. kelly on his late night show.
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