Cancellation of 'Kimmel' Taping Leads to Mass Disinformation

by Julian Spivey

Photo: ABC

 
Jimmy Kimmel canceled a taping of his nightly ABC talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” on Monday, May 19, and social media was abuzz with rumors that the veteran late-night comedian did so to retaliate against one of his scheduled guests that evening.
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The truth, which was fairly easy to find if one wanted facts, was that Kimmel was about to become a grandfather for the first time, as his daughter Katherine (33), one of his two adult children from his first marriage to Gina Maddy Kimmel, had given birth to a baby on Monday.

However, if you were perusing Threads and likely other social media sites (I shitcanned X late last year) on Monday and Tuesday you would’ve been under the impression that Kimmel’s show was canceled on Monday because he didn’t want to either interview CNN newsman Jake Tapper, one of the night’s scheduled guests, who’s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Choice to Run Again co-written with Alex Thompson, was to be released the next day.  

This incorrect assumption was prevalent on social media and even ran the next day on the so-called entertainment website showbiz411.com (and it’s still up!), with numerous people congratulating Kimmel for sticking it to Tapper and not allowing him to promote his book on the show, when they should have been congratulating him on becoming a grandfather. Tapper’s book is controversial in some circles, and he’s been a target of online hatred since the book was recently revealed.

If Kimmel didn’t want Tapper to promote his book on his show, wouldn’t it have been easier to cancel Tapper’s guest spot than cancel an entire taping that included “The Studio” star Seth Rogen instead? Or do we just no longer use our brains?

On Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel officially revealed the reasoning for the cancellation to be the birth of his granddaughter. He said: “Katie and her husband, Will, had a baby girl right at the time we shoot our show last night. So, I decided to be there instead of here.”

I hate how easily fake news is proliferated and shared on social media. It has been an online epidemic for a long time, but it seems to be seeping into parts of life where it has no business being, and people don’t seem to care that they're sharing disinformation. They want to believe what they’re sharing, and they don’t take the time to fact-check it.

I expect as much from a particular group of people, and I’ll just come out and say it … conservatives. They have a history of believing what they want to believe online, falling for disinformation and willfully sharing said information.

But that’s not what happened with this fake Kimmel/Tapper story. Most of the people I saw sharing the news thanked Kimmel for standing against Tapper. They wanted to believe he canceled his show to symbolically rebuke Tapper or stand up for the legacy of President Biden.

The conservative party has fallen so far down the well of disinformation that I fear many will never climb back out. I don’t want to see the rest of us fall with them. While the liberal version of disinformation may not be as racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. as the conservative version, it’s still wrong and could lead to a slippery slope.

Let’s get our facts straight.