Wanda Sykes guest-hosts Jimmy Kimmel Live, with NBA mean tweets, an offer you can't refuse

Most late-night comedy shows are on break for the summer, but not Jimmy Kimmel Live. To commemorate the start of the NBA Finals on Tuesday night, Kimmel Live had NBA stars past and present read mean tweets about themselves — and sometimes offer snappy replies.
Kimmel is leaving his show in the hands of series of guest hosts, and this week's host is comedian Wanda Sykes. She started off the show wishing everybody — well, almost everybody— a happy Fourth of July. "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated our nation's independence in the dorkiest way possible," she said, showing the video. "You might be saying riding an electric surfboard by yourself while holding a flag is the saddest thing you've ever seen," Sykes said. "For some reason, that offends me more than the people who stormed the Capitol."
"But I will say, after dealing with nothing but COVID, it was nice for a change to have the emergency rooms crowded with people who blew their fingers off with fireworks — that's progress," Sykes deadpanned. "The CDC told people to be careful over the holiday weekend because of that Delta strain of COVID," but they also warned us — on the CDC's official twitter account — not to let kids with diarrhea swim in and contaminate an entire pool, "and they included this little video to go with it. I guess the CDC still has some Trump appointees hanging around. Eric did that, I know it was Eric."
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Sykes also gave some side-eye to a white woman who drove a tractor through a police barricade and then a July 4th parade in Texas, applauded a Florida man who screamed about fireworks at 2 in the morning, and pitched a new service in which she offers to tell your friends and coworkers things you're too "chickens--t" to say to them. One person did not take it well.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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