Jimmy Kimmel should emulate ‘Tonight Show’ creator Steve Allen — on late-night TV AND politics

Jimmy Kimmel could learn how to disagree without being so disagreeable from the comedian who launched late-night television.

Letters from “The Tonight Show” founding host Steve Allen I discovered in a warehouse during research for “The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer” illustrate his passion for dialogue with conservatives rather than the disparagement Kimmel so relishes.

Allen pioneered the “man in the street” interviews Kimmel’s show repackages as “Pedestrian Question.”

And, like Kimmel, Allen supported the Democratic Party and progressive causes.

Unlike Kimmel, he cultivated friendships with Republicans.

He married one in actress Jayne Meadows.

In Charlie Kirk fashion, he debated William F. Buckley on campus, which led to them sharing co-author billing for “Dialogues in Americanism.”

He donated to National Review “because I was overjoyed at the emergence at last of what seemed a generally responsible presentation of the Conservative viewpoint.”

He contributed a cover article in 1963, and two years later, he acted as one of a handful of sponsors for the magazine’s 10th anniversary dinner, during which he delivered a six-minute speech.   

A more characteristically loquacious Allen wrote an 11-page letter to “the respectable representatives of the Right,” which included failed Republican Party presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, as well as National Review’s Buckley and Meyer, on “the problem of irresponsible Right-wing extremism” in late 1964.

Given that a year earlier a left-wing extremist had murdered the president, the plea struck as rich.

Allen’s timing, impeccable as a comedian, appeared clumsy here as he petitioned still-smarting conservatives to scold their own weeks after Lyndon Johnson’s landslide had buried them.

A salty Goldwater, for instance, recalled that “when I appeared on your program during the campaign” Allen had equated “my candidacy with the lunatic fringe.”

Buckley, in contrast, termed the proposal Allen had carbon copied to a half-dozen others as “a good idea.”

He called for “a bipartisan crusade against the vulgarization of politics.”

He wryly added: “By the way, now that we all have Xeroxes, do send me a copy of the next letter you send out scolding a left crackpot, will you?”

Frank Meyer wrote Allen that he regarded just two groups — “Communists and what there is of a genuinely fascist movement” — as beyond the pale.

The former Communist explained, “Every other group — no matter how violently I disagree with them or how deleterious I believe them to be for the security and future of the country — I regard as within the constitutional process.”

Meyer noted National Review had already excoriated John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, who once portrayed Dwight Eisenhower as a secret Communist, in print.

He wondered why those on the left subsidized rather than scolded irresponsible voices on their side.

“I don’t see a symmetry to this situation at all,” Allen responded, claiming the right’s criticisms of its nutters “have been in small print or they’ve been muttered as asides.”

The dialogue catalyzed positive action.

Months after his exchanges with Allen, Meyer wrote “The Birch Malady.” The article lambasted the John Birch Society for peddling conspiracy theories involving the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Club and so many others who supposedly marionetted all our troubles.

Allen shared with Meyer the transcript of his speech to the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy that included criticism of left-wing extremism.

Allen and Meyer achieved something constructive and, particularly through 2025’s lens, unusual: an in-house policing of corrosive, extremist rhetoric. 

In this, Steve Allen provides lessons for Kimmel the activist.

Elsewhere, he offers a cautionary tale to Kimmel the comedian.

Allen likened the early “Tonight Show” in his memoirs to “going to a party every night,” saying it exuded “the general atmosphere of a fraternity house.”

NBC misunderstood how this spirit translated to ratings. The network pushed non-comedic fare, such as reports on ski conditions and regular dispatches from a highbrow theater critic. 

Allen squashed that, but after NBC promoted him to prime time, it indulged that earlier tic and transformed “The Tonight Show” into a news-oriented, sister program of “The Today Show.”

It failed. Viewers wanted light after a heavy day.

NBC quickly inserted comedian Jack Paar, whom Allen had recommended, into his spot in 1957.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” repeats these errors by turning light comedy into ideological grimness.

Kimmel has told 7,189 jokes targeting conservatives to just 565 targeting liberals since NewsBusters started tracking punchlines.

Whether the infamous “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” fell under the “joke” classification remains unclear.

And that exemplifies Kimmel’s problem.

Despite embodying Allen’s frat-house vibe with “The Man Show” early in his career, Kimmel increasingly relies on ideological solidarity rather than humor to win laughter, which can feel more artificial than the canned hysterics of 1980s sitcoms.

Allen believed in comedy as ends. Kimmel believes in it as means.

This latter approach necessarily assures a corruption of purpose.

“This program is going to go on forever,” Allen famously told the audience in his first episode.

He meant that it lasted 90 minutes.

In the 71 years since, TV critics interpret the remark as some sort of prophecy about late-night comedy.

With a ratings freefall coinciding with politics marinating the genre, Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and company make Allen’s “prophecy” look precarious — but only because they so flagrantly ignore Allen’s example.

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of “The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer” (Encounter/ISI Books), is a Hoover Institution visiting fellow and American Spectator senior editor.