Now The White House Has To Address The ‘Kill Everyone In China’ Kimmel Controversy

Quick recap: A while back on Kimmel, during a segment titled “Kids Table,” a 6-year-old boy named Braxton suggested we should “kill everyone in China” to avoid paying our $1.3 trillion debt to the country. People flipped out. Some of them painted Hitler mustaches on pictures of Jimmy Kimmel. Others started a White House petition that read, in part, “The program is totally unacceptable and it must be cut. A sincere apology must be issued. It is extremely distasteful and this is the same rhetoric used in Nazi Germany against Jewish people.” Kimmel and ABC issued formal apologies, and Kimmel also went out onto the street to personally apologize to some of the protestors.

Which brings us to today. Or rather, this morning, when that White House petition I mentioned reached the 100,000 signatures in 30 days threshold to warrant an official response from the White House. Let’s pull this apart a little: The White House — an entity that, as you may have seen in the news, has a few other things on its plate at the moment — now has to issue a formal statement regarding something a 6-year-old said in a comedy sketch. I get that the bigger issue is that the adults at Kimmel produced and aired it, but, like, the president has to pretty much call out a first grader, right? That’s what going on here, yes?

I think we can all agree that the real issue here is that these petitions are even a thing. I mean, 100,000 signatures in 30 days? I could start a petition titled “Grumpy Cat Should Be Mayor Of Atlanta” and I’d have that thing locked down by the end of Happy Hour tonight. We can’t be trusted with this kind of power.

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