Like a lot of people, Jimmy Kimmel hates the twice-yearly time changes associated with daylight saving time, and he kicked off his Monday night “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” monologue with a plea for transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg to finally put an end to it.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” Kimmel asked after telling the story of being woken up way earlier than normal by his kids, who get up with the sun.
“Daylight saving time is something Benjamin Franklin, who has been dead for 230 years, came up with. As a joke. And it’s still screwing with us,” Kimmel continued. “For no reason. We don’t have to worry about conserving whale blubber for our lamps anymore.”
Kimmel complained that 2018’s Proposition 7, which gives the state the power to end these time switches, still hasn’t resulted in any change. “That was in 2018. It got 60% of the vote. And yet here we are, in the dark again at five o’clock,” Kimmel said.
But Kimmel hopes maybe there’s a chance this could change, thanks to Buttigieg.
“By the way, you know who is in charge of daylight saving for the government? The secretary of transportation. Pete Buttigieg. Mayor Pete is in charge,” Kimmel said.
“And the last time Pete was on our show, I asked him to end it. He said he’d see what he could do. You know what he did? He did nothing. He did nothing at all. But now I’m hopeful because Pete Buttigieg has two-month-old twins now,” Kimmel continued. “And now maybe he’ll understand what a nightmare this is.”
Kimmel noted that ending daylight saving time is a bipartisan issue, as “even history’s worst man, Donald J-O Trump,” supports not supporting it.
But then he hit a snag. “Let’s get a hashtag going. Whatever we have to do to encourage our secretary of transportation to move on this so we don’t have to go through it again next year,” Kimmel suggested.
“#givedaylightsavingthebuttigieg. Oh, no one will be able to spell that. Forget it.”
“Get this done. You will be carried through the streets of Washington on the exhausted yet thankful shoulders of this nation’s parents,” Kimmel said, addressing Buttigieg directly. “Please, get this done. Thank you. I’ve had enough.”
Watch the whole monologue above. Meanwhile, in case you’re curious, daylight saving time begins in spring — we spring forward into it — and ends in fall. Prop 7 expressly allows the state to simply stay on daylight saving time all year round, which seems like something Kimmel would also prefer.