Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Kimmel v. Gawker

I'm no fan of the Denton blogpire and I hate New York City. So I don't particularly care for Gawker since it is both (a) part of the Dentonverse and (b) about New York. Also, I kind of like Jimmy Kimmel, who can make with the funny. But Kimmel's recent ambush> of Gawker editrix Emily Gould is positively retarded. Evil Beet has an excellent retort:

I lost a lot of respect for Kimmel after watching this. He was in a bad mood, and I suppose he was trying to prove he could do “serious” television, and he really ought to have picked on someone his own size. His points don’t hold up. Celebrities these days know what celebrity means. You went to those auditions, Jimmy. Walked there with your own damn feet. You pitched those shows. You wanted to be a big star. You wanted people to write about you. People write about you now, Jimmy. Take the good with the bad, asshole. The Man Show did those candid segments that fucked with real people’s lives. I bet they didn’t all think it was as funny as you did. Oh, and remember how you left your wife of 14 years, with whom you had two children, for Sarah Silverman? Just checking, Mister Morality. Stick to sports and drinking beer and ogling women, Jimmy.


Whatever. The real shame here is that CNN is letting a game-show host anchor what's supposed to be a news show. (Not for the first times.) Several years back, when some other TV head moved from sports casting to "serious news," a friend journalist friend noted that the medium of television supercedes all of the imaginary subcategories we invent for it: In other words, TV news and TV gameshows have more in common than do, say, TV news and newspapers.

We can't expect someone like Jimmy Kimmel to remember that; but we should.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're getting awfully excited about Jimmy Kimmel sneaking across the DMZ between news and game shows, when he's really a late-night talk-show host subbing for an early-night talk-show host. And your legitimate journalist is Larry King!

On Gawker Stalker, nobody knew 5 years ago that being famous meant that every person who saw you (waiter, diner, fellow moviegoer) would not just tell their friends the next day at work, and not just call their friends and whisper 'guess who I'm sitting next to', but tell a website that would tell thousands of people within blocks of you where you are RIGHT NOW. Even if you were at your dry cleaner.

You wouldn't be freaked out by that? If you had kids? That's really the celebrity deal?

Also, your Evil Beet says that the Man Show did worse to people, so Kimmel had it coming. No. Every single person on the Man Show signed a waiver, and I'll bet that all of them signed AFTER being recorded acting stupid. That's asking for it. And I'm not sure they were all that mean to people not named Oprah.

The best and weirdest one is that your Evil Beet says Kimmel had it coming because he left his wife for Sarah Silverman. What?

Last, Gould called Gawker Stalker journalism but admitted that they publish items without checking at all whether they're true. What would happen if you did that in print?

But please keep manning the line between a news man like Larry King and a game show host like Jimmy Kimmel. Someone must. Larry King!

PS. I saw Morgan Brittany in restaurant north of LA once about 15 years ago. I'v seen Larry King many times. And David Broder and Michael Barone. But I'm no fink.

PPS. I wrote in before about the fake Antonella Barba pictures. This is like that.

Anonymous said...

Everyone who reads Gawker knows it's all just gossip and should be taken with a grain of salt. If they don't realize that, then they're idiots. I also consider illogical people who defend celebrities idiots, so "i, nanny mouse" comments aren't worth reading. I won't waste my time nest time I see one of your comments.

Anonymous said...

correction: "next"

(Since I'm sure "i, nanny mouse" would have loved to call me out on it.)

Anonymous said...

How The Gawker Stalker Map Works: A Guide For Dummies, Outraged Famous People And Old Folk

Remainders: Jimmy Kimmel Is An Ad Man

Anonymous said...

Who cares,

I'm saying two things that have nothing to do with "it's just gossip".

First, it's creepy and wrong to let everyone in NY know where famous people are right now, when they're not out looking for publicity.

Second, it's wrong to pass things along without have a good reason to think they're true, even on a gossip site.

The ad hominem arguments don't help. Kimmel may be (a) rich, (b) famous, (c) a hypocrite, (d) somebody who left his wife, and (e) mistaken about his show's blog advertising. But none of those things has much to do with whether he is right. (And the 'left his wife' point made by the Beet and the 'you're rich so you can hire bodyguards' argument made by the Gawkress were both off-point and strange.)

A good rule of thumb is to think twice before making an argument that depends in any way upon Larry King's legitimacy as a newsman. If people can't agree on that, there is no hope.