Jimmy Kimmel under fire as BTS fans say he made demeaning comments

ARMYs have recently flocked to social media to express their displeasure with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, claiming that he made derogatory remarks about BTS and COVID-19. During an interview with Ashley Park from 'Emily in Paris,' Jimmy Kimmel said that the 'BTS Fever' and COVID-19 are both "hazardous."

It didn't end there, though. Jimmy Kimmel recently performed a monologue in which he compared the evolution of boy bands to COVID-19 mutations. "So contagious it kills the world," he said at the conclusion, and several fans assumed he was referring to BTS.

Jimmy Kimmel, who recently compared "BTS fever" to having COVID-19 in an interview with Emily in Paris singer Ashley Park, has returned with a new monologue that includes a sneaky reference to a boy band "so contagious it wrecks the earth." While he does not specifically mention BTS, the message was clear. After all, who is the world's largest band right now?

“These variants, all the different variants in the world right now, it reminds me of the boy bands in the late 90s and early 2000s,” Kimmel said in the monologue. “You had the big ones like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, and then that mutated into O-Town and 98 Degrees. The JoBros popped up, Big Time Rush, they kept splitting off in different directions, eventually One Direction. And they took pieces and it popped up all over the world until eventually, we get to one that’s so contagious it destroys all life on earth.”

Making that kind of "joke" so close to the well-deserved backlash he and the show have gotten for making a low-key xenophobic statement about BTS and COVID seems... ill-advised and clumsy at best, targeted at worst. But, more than stirring the wrath of fans who are rightfully fed up with their favorite band being insulted all the time, it's just plain ignorant of the world we live in.

No way did @jimmykimmel and @JimmyKimmelLive just say covid and BTS "are both dangerous" and one is "lucky to come out of it alive."

TIRED of people not seeing the racism of comparing them to Covid bc they see them as "just a boyband" and not people. pic.twitter.com/ZVRrGTxiAi

— . (@e_von7) January 21, 2022

 

The world in which anti-Asian hate crimes increased during a global pandemic; the world in which Asian actors and superstars are underrepresented in Western media; the world in which Asian musicians must work seven times as hard to achieve, only to have the goalposts shifted at every turn.