And I'm not the first. See there have been a startling number of ACTUALLY FAMOUS purveyors of fake news who had their lives turn to shit.

See, I used to be a king around here at Cracked.com. Hosted a fake news show five days a week. And then three days a week. And then one day a week. And then suddenly, no days a week. It was right around the time Cracked Editor-in-Chief Jack O'Brien texted "you're canceled" to me that I realized that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't really a king around here at all.

Laugh while you can, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers: Being a fake news anchor is fun while it lasts. But as Dennis Miller might say, that fun evaporates faster than Rod Blagojevich's flop sweat at an outdoor Kant reading--once you get fired. Nothing ends a career and ruins a life faster than getting canceled as a fake anchorperson of fake news.

1 Craig Kilborn

Remember Craig? He hosted The Daily Show, back before you watched it. For a while, Craig was riding high; his The Daily Show gig was just another notch on his TV hosting belt. Then, for some reason, he gave an interview to Esquire magazine where he called the women who worked for the show "emotional bitches," and suggested that series co-creator Lizz Winstead would blow him if he asked her to.

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Not too surprisingly, both Craig and Lizz were gone within a year, presumably so that she could focus on blowing him full time. Kilborn moved on, though, and hosted The Late Show for six years.

And then the curse kicked in. He abruptly quit in 2006 so that he could pursue other television opportunities. Those opportunities included playing an asshole in Old School, and culminated with a bit part in the shitty remake The Benchwarmers. That was three years ago.



Oppurtunity ding-dong ditches Craig Kilborn.

Since then he has dropped off the grid. How does that happen? While he was by all accounts an unrepentant prick, Kilborn was a talented comedy writer, and the first host of the best comedy show on TV today. Did his infamous ego get the best of him? Or is there something darker at work here?

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The Part Where I Bitterly Compare Our Stories

Kilborn's departure from The Late Show, and anything resembling a career, was strange in that the show was doing fine. He never gave a reason.

On the other hand, there were several problems with my fake news show, "The News on Cracked," which eventually morphed into "The Week In Douchebaggery." (My mom was so proud.) The most prominent problem with the show was, in a word, You. The vast majority of You didn't watch it.



I'm only laughing at how much I hate you.

So I can't say I was shocked when I got the axe. I mean, my weekly notes from Jack consisted of things like: "You don't work here anymore," "Please stop posting more episodes of The Week in Douchebaggery," and "As soon as we figure out the password you're using, we're going to change it." And after all, all good things must come to an end. (Unless they're good things that happen to Swaim or fucking Daniel O'Brien, who was still in college when MY SECOND DAUGHTER WAS BORN. For those two punks, good things just KEEP ON COMING.)

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Dan and Swaim arrive at work the day WiD is canceled.

The Part Where I Seamlessly Transition To The Next Victim

But you know who probably WAS surprised to get the axe?