Last Friday, Jimmy Kimmel donned a pair of suspenders, affected an air of crotchety boredom and guest-hosted for Larry King. The topic at hand: Paparazzi: Do They Go To Far? (By the way, the answer to that question, like the answer to most questions asked by CNN, Dateline, and Primetime: The Outsiders is "Sometimes.")
During the course of the show, he interviewed an editor at Gawker.com about whether or not that site's reader-submitted celebrity sightings "go too far." But honestly I learned much more about Kimmel than I did about Gawker from watching the following clip.
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Lessons learned:
1. Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted The Man Show with a beer in hand for years, and whose current ABC talk show is as famous for its boozy green room as it is for "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship," is the only person who thinks that the headline "When Isn't Jimmy Kimmel Visibly Intoxicated?" went too far.
It's not libel or slander to say that a public figure who is known to drink appeared drunk in public. In fact, in this case I think it's a joke, which is a concept that Kimmel might not be too familiar with because
2. Jimmy Kimmel, one of the creators of Crank Yankers, also doesn't see what the point is of calling Kevin Costner "fat," and then putting up a picture of Jabba The Hut.
Well, the point is to "make fun" of Kevin Costner, an actor known for his good looks. In other words, the point is to make a joke. It might not be a very funny joke, but the "point" of it should be fairly obvious to a comedian–especially a comedian who has made a Rosie-O'Donnell-is-fat joke via puppets and a prank phone call.
3. Jimmy "Do You Jimmy?" Kimmel doesn't understand who advertises on the Internet.
4. Jimmy Kimmel doesn't advocate "throwing rocks" at celebrities, unless of course he's the one doing the throwing. (See the Rosie-O'Donnell-is-fat joke above)
But the most important lesson I learned watching that clip is that if CNN wants to debate whether or not a tongue-in-cheek celebrity stalker map "goes too far," they should probably get someone besides the former co-host of The Man Show to do the debating. Jimmy Kimmel accusing Gawker of "throwing rocks" at public figures, is like the creators of The Secret accusing a palm reader of peddling bullshit.