The last player picked in the NFL Draft each year is given the dubious nickname "Mr. Irrelevant." This year, that honor went to Chad Kelly, a quarterback from the University of Mississippi (and nephew of Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly).
In the pop-culture world, there is also a Mr. Irrelevant — and his name is Jimmy Fallon.
Judging from what Fallon and his late-night TV rivals have been doing lately, that title isn't changing hands any time soon.
Consider, if you must, Monday night's "Tonight Show" on NBC. Fallon opened with the standard monologue of just under 4 minutes — nearly 3 of which were jokes about Donald Trump. The jokes were routine, poking fun at Trump's inconsistent grasp of history, the ignorance of his Cabinet and the abnormal length of his ties. Nothing particularly edgy, and certainly nothing to get him or his followers up in arms on Twitter the next morning.
At the same time Monday, Fallon's main rivals were doing things differently.
On CBS, Stephen Colbert was launching a savage verbal volley at Trump. This was after Trump, in an interview with CBS News' John Dickinson, insulted CBS' "Face the Nation," which Dickinson hosts every Sunday. "I call it 'Deface the Nation,' " Trump joked.
Colbert, upholding the honor of CBS, unleashed a string of put-downs that would have done Don Rickles proud: "Mr.Trump, I love your presidency. I call it 'Disgrace the Nation.' " And, "Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine." And "You have more people marching against you than cancer." And the one about oral sex and Vladimir Putin that I can't print in a family newspaper (or many nonfamily ones).
Colbert's performance got the Twitter hordes energized. Right-wingers started a hashtag campaign, #FireColbert, demanding that the host be booted from "The Late Show" over his profane (and, on network air, bleeped) joke. Wednesday night, Colbert addressed the issue, saying he didn't regret insulting Trump, and that "while I would do it again, I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be."
Over on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel was taking on something even more important: the health scare involving his newborn son, Billy.
In a tearful monologue, Kimmel recounted Billy's birth the week before, and how Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, dealt with the news that Billy had a congenital heart problem and had surgery hours after being born. Billy now is fine and healthy, though Kimmel said he will face more operations as he grows up.
Kimmel reflected on how lucky he was to be rich enough to have health insurance — and how other families whose kids were in the same hospital may not be so lucky.
He noted that, before President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, Billy's congenital heart disease might have kept him from ever getting health insurance, because it would be "a pre-existing condition."
"If your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make," Kimmel said. "I think that's something that whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? … No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life."
President Obama tweeted praise for Kimmel's stand, one of the few comments he has made during the current health-care debate. Colbert urged his audience Tuesday to watch Kimmel's monologue online. Comedians Lewis Kay and Ike Barinholtz offered to donate money to the White House Correspondents Association in the name of the reporter who asked Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, to respond to Kimmel's comments. (A reporter did ask Wednesday, and Spicer replied with Trump's assertion that GOP's health-care bill still covers pre-existing conditions — an assertion disputed by many who actually have read the bill.)
Kimmel, by telling the story of Billy and innocent kids like him, implicitly shamed those Republicans who suggest that only bad people get sick or are too poor to afford insurance. (Take, for example, Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, who told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday that the GOP's plan is designed to make sick people pay more, "thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives.") Kimmel, in one 13-minute monologue, put a human face on America's health-care debate.
So while Colbert and Kimmel were making news and making a difference, Fallon — the guy who mussed up then-candidate Trump's hair — was making lame jokes about neckties. In a media landscape where everyone is taking up sides, Fallon's middle-of-the-road approach may get him run over by events.
Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.
This image released by CBS shows Stephen Colbert during a taping of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," airing Friday March 31, 2017, in New York. Late shows were tight-lipped when asked Monday, May 1, 2017, about their contingency plans for a possible writers strike, but if the past is any prologue, topical humor and fresh comedy may be scarce. (Richard Boeth/CBS via AP)
