Jimmy Kimmel, returning to his show on Tuesday after his suspension over a pointed joke, quotes Jack Paar upon his return to The Tonight Show 65 years earlier, after walking off in protest over a censored joke.

Different circumstances, of course, but I appreciate that Kimmel (or his people) knows and respects the history of late night talk shows enough to make the reference.

Kimmel’s monologue (6+ million viewers on TV, 18+ million on YouTube) struck exactly the right tone of defiance, conciliation, and emotion. He choked up during his “apology” for last week’s joke, and followed it up with this:

This show is not important. What is important is we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from Russia, countries in the Middle East, who told me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power, and worse […]. They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air, and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal, that’s not American, that’s un-American, and it’s so dangerous.

He went hard after Brendan Carr and Donald Trump, and took a dig at Disney while he was at it, reading a “statement” that was one of the “conditions” of his return:

To reactivate your Disney+ and Hulu account, open the Disney app on your smart TV or TV-connected device.

I’ve very rarely paid attention to Kimmel. I have no particular issue with him, beyond not finding him especially entertaining, but I’m glad to see he’s not backing down from this fight.

(Be sure to stick around for a very De Niro appearance by Robert De Niro.)