“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was among the 34 winners chosen by the Peabody Awards jury to win this year’s prizes, and Kimmel joked that he “never felt dumber” being awarded along side documentaries and news programs that “exposed the horrors of ice, prison abuse and a teacher who took on Putin.”
But the audience at Sunday night’s ceremony cheered on as the talk show host, in his acceptance speech, reminded the crowd that “making jokes about the President – in America – shouldn’t win you a prize. We have the right, guaranteed by the Constitution, to criticize and satirize our leaders. That is a right I took for granted, for the first 57 years of my life, until last September, when the FCC delivered an unpleasant surprise.”
Kimmel was honored for “embracing the responsibility of comedy to reveal truths amid political volatility,” in particular after he was briefly suspended last fall by ABC after threats from the FCC.
When that happened, Kimmel said in his acceptance speech, “I experienced something even more surprising. I watched firsthand as millions of people, even some from across the aisle, objected. They spoke up, they marched, they cancelled their subscriptions to ‘Star Wars,’ because they refused to allow our freedoms to be bulldozed like the East Wing of the White House.
