Before his monologue Tuesday, Jimmy Kimmel was treated to a thunderous standing ovation, which he appeared to appreciate. But his words, he said, were not primarily for his fans.

“I want to thank the people who don’t support my show or what I believe but support my right to share those beliefs anyway.”

There was a time when I hated Kimmel’s show. Not “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” on which he spoke those simple and powerful words this week when he returned to the airwaves after a six-day suspension encouraged by the Federal Communications Commission. I’m talking about “The Man Show,” Comedy Central’s gross-campy sketch show that ran from 1994 to 2004 and is mostly remembered for well-endowed women jumping on trampolines and Kimmel appearing in blackface.

It was purposely crass, stupid, middle-school-boy humor. As distasteful as I found it, I appreciated that Kimmel and cohost Adam Carolla were covered by the same First Amendment that protected me as a journalist, which says that the government is not to abridge speech. I would never suggest legal intervention to stop the bouncy bosoms. I just didn’t watch it.

Those 1A rights seemed, very recently, not to apply to “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the late-night talk show he has hosted since 2003 that ABC suspended for six shows after the host’s comments following the murder of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. Outrage was expected — there’s always outrage. The difference is that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr pressured ABC to take action over the remarks — saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way” — and the actual president of the country publicly applauded Kimmel’s preemption.

Despite Carr walking back his statements Tuesday, saying the suspension occurred “not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” the show remained off the approximately 70 ABC stations owned by reportedly conservative-leaning companies Sinclair and Nexstar until Friday, when the former announced Kimmel would return. While I haven’t agreed with their stance, as nongovernmental organizations, it’s their right to take it.

The Kimmel incident follows another late-night dustup many believe was spurred by the government. CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” will end next year, which was announced shortly after the host called out the settlement between his network and the current presidential administration over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The official explanation was that “The Late Show” was losing too much money, but official government leaders cheered the news of its end.

None of this should be happening. This is where the First Amendment is supposed to kick in. These threats that the government is making? As Kimmel said Tuesday, “That’s not legal. That’s not American.”

While Kimmel and Colbert have been targeted for their takes, it’s far from the first time that late-night or other media hosts have done and said potentially offensive things in the name of “humor.” There’s a clip from 1962 in “My Mom Jayne,” Mariska Hargitay’s moving documentary, where the late Jayne Mansfield plays the violin on “The Tonight Show” in an attempt to change her bombshell reputation. When she explains her new career intentions during the interview, host Jack Paar cuts her off with, “Who cares? Kiss me!” Yuck. He kept his job.

Decades later, Paar’s “Tonight Show” descendant Jay Leno got lots of traction in the 1990s for mocking the unfolding O.J. Simpson trial so relentlessly he seemed to forget it was about the brutal murder of two people, including a victim of domestic violence. I found Leno’s schtick then — as well as the way he went after college intern Monica Lewinsky more viciously than the president she’d had a relationship with — disgusting. But I’d never call for the government to try to get him fired, nor did the government do so, even when President Bill Clinton was the butt of the joke.

Heck, somewhere online exists audio of the 1997 press conference of 26-year-old me trying to do a satellite interview with Howard Stern, whose terrestrial radio show had just come to the Central Pennsylvania market. Realizing I was a Black woman, he repeatedly asked me whether Black or white men were better in bed, grilled the men reporters in the room about my hotness, and tried to get the only other woman reporter to make out with me.

I’d already fled to my car by the last of these requests because of my deadline and because I’d just been reduced to my race and gender in front of my colleagues and everyone thought it was hilarious. I hated what he said to me. But it never occurred to me that he should be legally barred from saying it.

Just earlier this month, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said homeless people should be euthanized, a vile thing for which he gave a lukewarm apology some higher-up probably forced him to make. As far as we know, the government didn’t threaten Fox to can him until he did. Ditto for his network mate Jesse Watters, who on Tuesday, just hours before Kimmel’s monologue, suggested bombing or gassing the United Nations because the escalator the president and first lady were riding on stopped on the way up.

Those words were far more violent than anything Kimmel said, yet they are protected by the First Amendment. Would honorable people normally say things like that, out loud, on television? Nah. Does the law say they get to? Yes, it does.

I admit that I am not always a fan of everything Kimmel does, like his weird bit at the Emmys when he pulled focus during “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson’s acceptance speech by pretending to be dead and making her step around him. But at the end of the day, he gets to not be funny sometimes. He gets to say things that piss people off. You don’t have to watch it. The government doesn’t get to tell you that you can’t.

“This show is not important,” Kimmel said Tuesday. “What is important is that we get to live in a country where we’re allowed to have a show like this.”

Well, at least for now.

This post has been updated.