Today is Columbus Day in the United States, and during his monologue on Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel suggested an Italian American man we could celebrate instead, and it’s actually not bad.
But first, he ran through an exhaustive list of reasons why Columbus was terrible, noting that he was so “deliberately ignorant” that now that he was alive, “he probably could have run the Republican Party. “
“Here’s how you know Columbus Day isn’t so hot anymore,” Kimmel said in his monologue. “There’s no Google Doodle for this. Nothing. They usually have a doodle for the holidays. They doodle to celebrate Fairy Bread Day. Today, they’re doodle-free.”
Kimmel said that today is Indigenous People’s Day too, and we should really pick one. “It’s like saying it’s Arbor Day and Chainsaw Day. It can’t be both,” he joked.
“I don’t know why Columbus even has a day now,” Kimmel continued as he began to explain the many reasons Columbus sucked. “I understand why Italian Americans get upset when you say that because in school, we were all taught that Columbus discovered America. When the truth is,—he never got closer to North America.” Not only that, Leif Erickson had set foot in Canada hundreds of years before Columbus was born. And, Columbus, who by all accounts was a cruel, and terrifying, and self-serving man, Italian There wasn’t either! Italy wasn’t there then. It wasn’t made yet.”
“Then why would we defend him?” Kimmel asked. “And the man had one task: to come to India, and he missed it by 9000 miles. But instead of believing that he was wrong, and not in India, he started calling everyone ‘Indians. Who is willfully ignorant, if he were alive today, he might have run the Republican Party.
“Christopher Columbus is basically what if Donald Trump had been born in the 1400s and his father gave him a boat, right,” Kimmel said. Then he got his idea for a replacement.
“So I say, if you want to celebrate a great man of Italian descent today, make it this man: Tommy LaSorda,” Kimmel said of a photo of the famed Los Angeles Dodgers manager appearing on screen. suggested. “They shipped Dodger Blue! And he made that San Diego chicken into Chicken Parmigiana, too.
“The point is – we can do better than Columbus,” explained Kimmel. He closed a bit by mentioning how Donald Trump is a huge supporter of the holiday (you can guess why), and how he called for it to be “brought back” on Monday.
“Here’s an idea. How do we get Columbus Day back and you get those confidential documents you stole, right?” Kimmel offered.
Watch the full monologue above.