Will Kimmel Turn the Oscars into the Globes 2.0?

Another year, another set of Academy Awards up ahead. There once was a time when the annual ceremony was worthy of promotion and our attention. It truly did celebrate the best of an artistic medium — without self-congratulatory excess, without hosts who went political.

Once. Long ago.

The question with this year’s Academy Awards is just how political things will get with Kimmel as host.

We know now that award shows are less about the celebration of art and more about stars patting themselves on the back and using a stage as a platform to preach to America. Remember the Golden Globes? The question with this year’s Academy Awards, which will air Feb. 26, is: Just how political things will get with Jimmy Kimmel as host?

When Kimmel first made the announcement about his hosting duties, he took a gentle swat at President Trump, saying, “I got a very nice call of congratulations this morning from the president of Taiwan. And just to be clear, she called me, not the other way around.”

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Let us not forget Kimmel hit President Trump with an off-color joke about both the president and his wife. When hosting the 68th Emmy Awards, Kimmel made a crude joke regarding Melania Trump, now the first lady. “If it wasn’t for television, would Donald Trump be running for president?” Kimmel asked from the stage. “No, he would be home right now quietly rubbing up against his wife Malaria while she pretended to sleep.”

It’s not the only crude joke the comedian has made at the first lady’s expense.

There’s plenty of other evidence Kimmel can be nasty and bring out the worst of the Left. On a show in May 2016, he went on a rant about climate change. He said, “The idea that she [Sarah Palin] knows more than 97 percent of scientists — it’s dangerous and offensive … This isn’t a matter of political opinion. This is a matter of scientific opinion … Either you believe in science or you don’t. Why believe scientists on molecules and the speed of light and Cialis, but not on this?”

That’s the same global warming claptrap we’ve heard for years.

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Kimmel, though, has had opportunities to slam conservatives and he’s grabbed them. On one show last April, he said, “Yesterday, Trump met with one of his arch-nemeses, Megyn Kelly. They talked for an hour. In the end they agreed to put aside their differences and get back to what’s important, which is getting white people very angry. Kelly spoke about Trump on her show. Is it just me, or is that the feel of one of the forced hostage videos?”

Last March, Kimmel hosted then-Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz and engaged in a vicious exchange. He said to Cruz, “You’re not popular with your colleagues … John Boehner called you Lucifer.” He also went on a rant regarding radical Islam and said Obamacare “doesn’t feel like a disaster.”

Things could get bad on Oscar night. We could even be looking at Golden Globes 2.0 — Kimmel’s show is usually targeted at America as a whole. He’s another late-night host who revels in being divisive and politically partisan. While the Oscar audience is global, the audience in the auditorium will be 100 percent Hollywood — so they’ll be expecting (if not demanding) some hate to be thrown Trump’s way and the way of anyone that doesn’t align with the Left.

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There is some hope, though. Kimmel did make fun of the overly-PC Thanksgiving messages in the media this year. A 2012 interview with Salon.com claimed he has both conservative and liberal writers on his show.

Further, in an interview with Deadline Hollywood, when asked about the possibility of a President Trump appearance on his talk show, Kimmel said, “If the president wants to be on your show, you have the president on your show. I think there are people who have no chance of having the president on their show who would say that they wouldn’t have him, but that to me is foolish. The presidency is an important job, and it’s an interesting job, and if you don’t have a desire to discuss that, you shouldn’t be hosting a talk show.”

Still, Kimmel has kept his left-leaning rants consistent on his late-night show and has lashed out at Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks through Twitter. Kimmel even called Trump’s pick to head the EPA a “piece of sh**.”

Unfortunately — the Oscars this year have a good chance of being as divisive, if not more so, than the Golden Globes. With Kimmel as host, we can expect Trump and conservatives as a whole to be the brunt of most of the night’s jokes. We can also probably expect plenty more speeches mimicking Streep’s elitist Globes rant. Once again, art will be overshadowed as Hollywood’s left-leaning preaching is likely to reign supreme.