ERWC 3.

0 Micro-Module

Jimmy Kimmel Live Monologue on May 1, 2017

To the teacher: This monologue is a narrative with a strong thesis, “no parent should ever have to
decide if they can afford to save their child’s life,” in the last paragraph. Embedded in Kimmel’s
narrative are facts about heart disease (medical logos) and a political argument about health care
(political logos). As Kimmel relates his tale about the birth of his son, many parents and other family
members will identify with the situation of being in a scary medical crisis, having to process
complicated medical facts, and having to make quick decisions on the spot. This identification with
Kimmel is part of what makes the story so powerful and persuasive. Another theme of the piece is that
saving his son was “an enormous team effort” and that we are all part of the team. By the time the
reader or listener gets to the end it is very difficult to disagree with the thesis. After this monologue
went viral, many politicians began to argue that any health care bill they would support would have to
pass “the Kimmel test.” Kimmel tries to keep to a fairly non-partisan line in this piece, but in later
monologues he was forced to take sides.

This mini-module provides a transcript of the monologue, which is also available as a YouTube video.
The url is at the end of the transcript. One feature of this module is an opportunity to compare the
experience of reading the text to watching and hearing the video. We recommend that students read
before watching, but some classes may benefit from viewing the video first.

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Reading Rhetorically

Preparing to Read

Activity 1: Setting Learning Goals for the Module

Discuss the following goals with your students. You may need to have a conversation about
“chronological.”

This module has the following learning goals. Students will learn to

 Identify the elements of a good persuasive narrative

 Identify the rhetorical strategies that can make a story more persuasive
 Analyze the way in which time is represented in a narrative, i.e. chronological progression,
flashbacks, flashforwards, and simultaneous events
 Write an effective narrative with a point

Activity 2: Exploring Key Concepts

Think about the following questions. You may want to discuss your answers with your
neighbor.

1. Who is Jimmy Kimmel? What is his job? (You might need to do a search to find out.)
 2. What is a monologue? What do you expect from a monologue given by a person like Jimmy
Kimmel?

Activity 3: Making Predictions and Asking Questions

Read the first paragraph of the text. Think about how the information in that paragraph might
influence how you will read the rest of the text. Then think about the following questions.

3. What does this tell you about the type of text it will be?
4. Why does Kimmel tell us at the very beginning that the story will be “scary” but that it will
have a happy ending? Why does he start by referencing the future of the story? What effect
does this have on you as a reader?

Activity 4: Creating Learning Goals

Kimmel says he is going to tell us a story. Think about the learning goals of the module. Then
think about these questions:

1. What are some reasons we might want to read or hear a story?

2. Are you good at telling stories? Do you know someone who is? What makes a good story?
How can you improve your own storytelling?

Write down your answers so that you can return to them later.

Reading Purposefully

Activity 5: Reading for Understanding

Read the text quickly, following the story. When you finish, think about how the text affected
you. Turn to a neighbor and take turns sharing your initial responses. Think about the
following questions:

1. Is there any part of the story that makes you feel an emotion? What part and what emotion?
2. Does it change your mind about something? What is it?
3. Does it make you want to do something? What is it?

Together, come up with a list of responses.

Activity 6: Considering the Structure of the Text

To the teacher: This activity adds a third consideration to the typical Say/What analysis: How
the narrative organizes time. Kimmel begins:

I have a story to tell about something that happened to our family last week. I’m sorry,
you know I try not to get emotional, but it was a scary story, and before I go into it I
want you to know it has a happy ending. Don’t get too upset; leave that to me.

The event he is going to describe is in the past, but right off the bat he gives the audience the
future of the story (a flashforward) and tells them how to respond emotionally. As he delivers
 the monologue, he moves back and forth between show time, hospital time, home time, and the
larger political moment. There are many "nows" in his story, as there are in most stories,
including the "now" of senators taking a vote on health care. Students writing a narrative
assignment would have to make these choices too. There are “flashbacks,” “flashforwards,”
and simultaneous events, such as when Kimmel is in the room with his son and the doctors,
while his wife is still in the recovery room.

Now read the text again, paragraph by paragraph. For each paragraph, answer the following
questions:

1. What is this paragraph about?

2. What affect does this paragraph have on the reader?
3. What point in time is the paragraph? There is the “now” of Jimmy Kimmel in front of his
audience, the “now” of Jimmy Kimmel in the hospital (which is past from the point of view of
the audience), and the in-between time of Jimmy Kimmel at home with his new son.

Activity 7: Considering the Rhetorical Situation

To the teacher: At this point, you may want to have the students view the YouTube video of the
monologue and have a discussion about the different experiences that the text and the video
provide. The students will probably argue that the video provides a more immediate and
emotional connection to the speaker. However, the printed text allows us to be more analytical
and to return to places in the text that interest us rhetorically.

You may also want to introduce the concept of “kairos” (an ancient Greek word that means
timeliness and appropriateness). There are two moments here that influence the reception of the
monologue: the birth of Kimmel’s son and the national conversation about repealing the
Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” There is also the issue of the
appropriateness of talking about a serious medical procedure on a comedian's late night talk
show, where people expect to be entertained.

Think about the context in which this monologue was delivered.

1. What is the occasion for this monologue? What is special about this moment for Kimmel
and for his audience?
2. What is Kimmel trying to accomplish with this speech? What is his purpose? Does he
succeed?

Questioning the Text

Activity 8: Summarizing and Responding

Think about the following questions. Then write a short summary of the monologue and its
effect on readers.

1. What is the point of Kimmel’s story? (We might call this his thesis.)
2. How does Kimmel lead up to his point?
3. How does Kimmel support his point?
4. Do you think that most of the people in his audience agreed with him? Why or Why not?
Activity 9: Thinking Critically

A good personal narrative usually contains some of the following elements. Which ones does
Kimmel’s narrative contain? Check off the ones you find and think about how they contribute
to the effect on the reader.

◦ Specific actions and events

◦ Sensory detail
◦ Dialog or interior monologue
◦ Remembered feelings or insights
◦ Variable and effective pacing (some parts are slow, others are fast-faced)
◦ Suspense, tension, or surprise
◦ Comparisons and contrasts between scenes and people

To the teacher: The pathos and identification in this piece is so strong that it is difficult to argue
logically against Kimmel’s thesis without seeming coldly logical.

Think about the following questions:

1. Most readers and listeners can identify with Jimmy Kimmel’s situation. What are
some elements of the text that help produce this identification?

2. Most readers and listeners will be emotionally moved by this story. What are things
that Kimmel does to make us emotionally involved?

3. After reading or hearing this narrative, what arguments can you think of against
Kimmel’s thesis that “no parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save
their child’s life”? How would you feel about yourself while making these arguments?

4. Do you think that Kimmel would have been more persuasive or less persuasive if he
had written his argument as an essay with the thesis in the first paragraph? Why or why
not?

Preparing to Respond: Discovering What You Think

Activity 10: Considering the Writing Task and Your Rhetorical Situation

Jimmy Kimmel tells the story of an intensely personal experience in order to make a larger
point about the kind of health care this country should provide. He uses his narrative to build
up to his thesis, “no parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s
life,” which comes in the last paragraph. This is sometimes called a “persuasive narrative.” We
could also call it “a story with a point.”

We have all had experiences that taught us something important or connected the personal to a
larger issue or context. Think of a story that you want to tell that makes a strong point. It
might be a story that you have told to family members or friends before many times. The
difference this time is that you want to craft the story specifically to make a strong point with
your audience, which could be your classmates, or perhaps you could imagine Jimmy Kimmel’s
 audience. You could choose to make this point at the beginning and tell your story to support it,
coming back to the point at the end. You could put the main point at the climax of the story,
which might be somewhere in the middle. Or you could do like Jimmy Kimmel and put it at the
end. Do whatever you think makes sense for your story and your audience. You are going to
read your story to a partner, or to the class, so you could begin the way Jimmy Kimmel does: “I
have a story to tell about . . .”

Questions to ask yourself:

1. What is the lesson or point of the story you want to write?

2. Where should you begin? What are the various “now” times in your story? (Aristotle
recommends beginning “in the middle of things.” Don’t start with waking up when the
interesting part begins in the late afternoon.)

3. What characters are in this story besides you? What do your readers need to know
about them? What motivates them?

4. What are the main events or episodes in this story? Should you present them in
chronological order?

5. Is there a turning point where things change? How can you make this clear to the
reader?

6. What effect are you trying to achieve? (Do you want to make the reader laugh or cry?
Do you want to change the reader’s opinion about something, or help the reader
understand something?)

7. What details are important to the story, or the effect you are trying to achieve? What
details can you leave out?

8. How should you end the story?

Writing Rhetorically

Activity 11: Composing a Draft

Review your answers to the questions above and write down the main parts of the story you
want to tell. As noted above, if it helps you get started, write “I have a story to tell about . . .”
Some students like to just start writing after that and see where it goes. Others like to make a
scratch outline that lists the parts of the story first. Do what works for you.

Activity 12: Choosing and Analyzing Details

Think about what details you want to add to the basic story and what you might leave out.
Concrete sensory details about people and places are often engaging to readers. Details about
personalities, clothing, and emotions are also things that help the reader imagine being there.

Activity 13: Organizing Ideas

 Narratives are often chronological in organization, but sometimes flashbacks to a previous time
are useful for explaining things. Sometimes things are happening in two places at once to
different groups of people so you have to alternate back and forth from location to location.
Think about the best way to organize your story.

Activity 14: Using the Words of Others

Dialog is an important part of narrative. In most situations, people say things to each other.
Think about what the people in your story say and how you are going to represent it. Are you
going to have direct quotations? Or are you going to paraphrase what they said? What would
be most effective?

If you haven’t already, write a draft of your narrative that is ready to share with a partner.

Revising Rhetorically

Activity 15: Gathering and Responding to Feedback

Read your story to a partner. Listen carefully to his or her feedback. Do they understand the
story? Did they enjoy it? Do they get the point? Make any changes that you think will help
you affect your readers and listeners in the way that you want.

Now you are ready to read your story to the class.

Activity 16: Reflecting on Your Reading and Writing Process

Consider the following questions

1. At the beginning of this module we asked, “What do you expect from a monologue given by
a person like Jimmy Kimmel?” Did you get what you expected? Why or why not?

2. What did you learn from writing your own “story with a point”? Do you think that these
skills will be useful in other assignments?

3. What do you think your audience learned from hearing your story?
Jimmy Kimmel’s Jimmy Kimmel Live Monologue on May 1, 2017
Transcribed from a YouTube video by Meline Akashian with absolutely no attention to spelling people’s names
right.

I have a story to tell about something that happened to our family last week. I’m sorry, you know I try not to get
emotional, but it was a scary story, and before I go into it I want you to know it has a happy ending. Don’t get
too upset; leave that to me.

A little over a week ago, on April 21st, my wife Molly gave birth to a boy, a baby boy. His name is William Josh
Kimmel. Thank you, thank you very much. We call him Billy. It was an easy delivery, six pushes and he was
out. He appeared to be a normal healthy baby until about three hours after he was born. We were out of the
delivery room, we moved to the recovery room, our whole family was there. We introduced him to his 2 and half
year old sister, she was cute with him, we were happy, everything was good, my wife was in bed relaxing, when
a very attentive nurse at Cedar Sinai Hospital, her name was Nanush, was checking him out and heard a murmur
in his heart, which is common in newborn babies, but she also noticed he was a bit purple, which is not common,
so she asked me to come with her.

And my wife and I assumed it would be nothing. Our daughter had a heart murmur, too, and we didn’t notice
that he wasn't the color he was supposed to be. So I accompanied Billy and the nurse went down the he hall to
another part of the hospital, the neonatal ICU, where another excellent nurse named Anne checked him out and
called in a doctor. Now all of a sudden it felt serious, and the room started to fill up— more doctors and nurses
and equipment started coming in. They determined that he wasn’t getting enough oxygen into his blood, which
as far as I understood at the time was most likely one of two things, either his heart or his lungs, and you hope
it's the lungs because sometimes they have fluid in them after delivery and its potentially a minor thing. But they
did an x-ray and his lungs were fine which meant his heart wasn’t, which meant more doctors and nurses and
equipment comes in and it's a terrifying thing, I, you know my wife is back in the recovery room and she has no
idea what’s going on and I’m standing in the middle of a lot of very worried looking people, kind of like right
now, who are trying to figure out what the problem is.

It’s Friday night and so they call a pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Eban Zahn who, when they called him, was
picking his mother up from the airport. Luckily her plane was not delayed; he got to the hospital very quickly.
They did an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart, and found out Billy was born with a heart
disease, something called Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. It’s hard to explain. Basically the
pulmonary valve was completely blocked and he has a hole in the wall in between the left and right sides of his
heart. They brought my wife in, they wheeled her in and Dr. Zahn told her what was going on and what our
options were, and we decided to take him to Children’s Hospital where there’s a world renowned cardiac
surgeon who is by all accounts a genius, his name is Dr. Van Starns, so we put the baby in an ambulance to
Children's’ Hospital in Los Angeles and on Monday morning Dr. Starns opened his chest and fixed one of the
two defects of his heart. He went in there with a scalpel and did some kind of magic that I can’t even begin to
explain. He opened the valve and the operation was a success. It was the longest three hours of my life. They
didn't do everything, He’ll have to do another open heart surgery in three to six months to close those holes. But
they want to wait until he’s bigger, then they’ll have a third, hopefully non-invasive procedure sometime, maybe
in his early teens, to replace the valve that he has now.

So this poor kid, this is what he looked like on Monday [picture of newborn hooked up to tubes and cables]…
but this is what he looked like yesterday [close-up of smiling infant]. Poor kid, not only did he get a bad heart,
he got my face.

Six days after his open heart surgery, we got to bring him home, which is amazing. He’s doing great. He’s eating,
he’s sleeping, he peed on his mother today while she was changing his diaper. He’s doing all the things he’s
supposed to do. And our daughter – here’s a picture of my wife and me and Billy and our daughter. As you can
see, Jane is pretty excited about having a younger brother. You know, they tell you, when you bring a new baby
home, you bring a gift for the older sibling and tell them it’s from the baby, as though we gave birth to the Easter
bunny. It makes no sense, but that’s what they tell you to do. So we brought Jane these shopkins,. You know
what these are? They’re like tiny little cupcakes and donuts with faces on them, and we said, “Billy bought these
for you.” And she believed it. She’s not too bright. He doesn’t even have money. Not only doesn’t he have
money, he doesn’t even have a place to put money, he has no wallet. How would he buy these for her? As far as
she knows, the baby is signed up for Amazon Prime. She likes him OK. And this is the best picture of all; that’s
me in a coma [speaker asleep on a couch with the baby in his arms]. And I have a list of people I want to thank
for making that happen. These are just some of the people who played a part in this. It was an enormous team
effort, it really was.

[Here Kimmel thanks many people including doctors, nurses, movie stars, corporate sponsors, colleagues, and
his wife.]

And I want to say one other thing. President Trump last month proposed a six billion dollar cut in funding to the
National Institute of Health, and thank God our congressmen made a deal last night to not go along with that.
They actually increased funding by two billion dollars, and I applaud them for doing that. More than 40% of the
people who would have been affected by those cuts to the National Institute of Health are children, and it would
have a major impact on a lot of great places, including Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, which is so
unbelievably sad to me. We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until
a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all. You know, before 2014, if
you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you’d never be able to get
health insurance because you had a preexisting condition. If you were born with a preexisting condition, if your
parents didn’t have medical insurance, you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a
preexisting condition.

If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s
something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? I
mean, we do. Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whatever you support, we need to make sure that the
people who are supposed to represent us, people who are meeting about this right now in Washington,
understand that very clearly. Let’s stop with the nonsense, This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the
team, It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.
We’ve got to take care of each other.

I saw a lot of families there, and no parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life.
It just shouldn’t happen. Not here. So. Anyway. Thank you for listening. I promise I’m not going to cry for the
rest of the show. Please say a prayer for or send positive thoughts to the families with children who are still in
the hospital now, because they need it. And, um, thanks. We have a special show tonight. We’ll be right back
with Dr. Oz.

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