DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA’S LATE-NIGHT CONSCIENCE:

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t spare many feelings at the [2012] White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month. During his address, the late night host took aim at President Obama, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, attendee Lindsay Lohan, and Keith Olbermann, among others. But there’s one target who escaped Kimmel’s crosshairs: former presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

During a visit to Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show this week, Kimmel revealed that he ultimately decided to nix a joke that referenced Santorum’s actions after the death of his infant son. The line: “Newt Gingrich’s campaign is so dead, Mitt Romney wants to baptize it and Rick Santorum wants to put it in a jar and show it to his kids.”

Kimmel was talked out of that grisly “joke” when he ran it past Jake Tapper, who wisely told him “I thought that joke would cause the room to turn against him, perhaps even causing a stampede, with the Hilton getting in on the tar-and-feather concession.”

Classy stuff, Jimmy. As Glenn has noted, “Trump is not the cause of Washington’s decline. He’s a symptom, the wrecking ball that many Americans think was required.”

The above “joke” has a Weimar meets Grand Guignol feel to it (and also dovetails perfectly with Larry O’Connor’s Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood Projection). “First comes the grotesque,” to coin a phrase from 2013.