Health Care, Entertainment Media, New Media

Please @JimmyKimmel - stay out of politics. Leave the important stuff to reality TV stars with a knack for bankrupting casinos.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) September 22, 2017

At The Daily Beast, Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsang, and Sam Stein report:

Behind the scenes, the ABC star was getting an assist. Kimmel and his team were in touch with health care officials, charities and advocacy groups, multiple sources told The Daily Beast. He also was in touch with the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) who, according to a source familiar with their conversations, “provided technical guidance and info about the bill, as well as stats from various think tanks and experts on the effects of [Graham-Cassidy].”

Ted Johnson at Variety:

Unusual as it may be for Kimmel to take such an active role in trying to mobilize opposition to a pending piece of legislation, it is not entirely out of the ordinary for a late-night host to drop punch lines and veer into the center of a serious Capitol Hill policy fight.

Robert Lichter, author of “Politics Is a Joke! How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life,” points to Jon Stewart, who in 2010 devoted an entire show to pushing for a bill to fund assistance for first responders on 9/11, as it was being held up by Republican senators. Three years later, Stewart slammed the House GOP for voting against a bill to supply aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In 2013, David Letterman called out Republican senators for voting against gun control legislation.

Colbert testified at a House hearing on immigrant farm workers, and only briefly stepped out of his Comedy Central host persona, using sarcasm even when questioned by lawmakers. Some Republicans complained that he mocked the hearing process, but there was little doubt that he drew attention to an issue that otherwise would have gotten little.

Alex Kantrowitz at Buzzfeed:

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, authors of the latest GOP health care bill that appears headed for defeat, aren’t winning any friends on Twitter.

The two are generating epically negative “ratios” in response to their recent tweets — and while it’s not exactly a scientific definition, “the ratio” is a good indicator of whether Twitter users are into a tweet or not. If a tweet has more retweets than replies, chances are its author said something people agree with or find interesting enough to share. If a tweet has far more replies than retweets — meaning lots of people felt compelled to say something to its author as opposed to simply pass their thoughts along — chances are the person behind the tweet angered the Twitterverse.

Cassidy this week posted the worst ratio’d tweet in an approximately 12-month data set collected by research company Fast Forward Labs, which includes the tweets of eight prominent politicians — including President Donald Trump, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, House Speaker Paul Ryan — and late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, who's recently entered the political discussion. Cassidy received 3,100 replies compared to 86 retweets on a tweet saying that under his bill, “states must ensure that individuals with pre-existing conditions have access to adequate & affordable insurance.”