Earlier this year, Jay Leno apologized for years of racist, lazy jokes about the Asian community in a discussion with Media Action Network for Asian Americans leader Guy Aoki. “At the time I did those jokes, I genuinely thought them to be harmless,” the former-The Tonight Show host said, adding that “I do not consider this particular case to be another example of cancel culture but a legitimate wrong that was done on my part.”
Unlike, say, fellow multi-millionaire veteran comedians Jerry Seinfeld or Tim Allen (“You’ve gotta be real careful around here. You get beat up if don’t believe what everybody believes. This is like ’30s Germany,” the conservative moaned), Leno is not whining about how he can’t tell the same jokes that he used to.
“When I do a gig in Utah and they’ll go, ‘Look, we don’t want any drug jokes, we don’t want any sex jokes.’ I go, ‘OK, I’ll take those out’ and I do something else,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden the sexist jokes everybody used to do, you can’t do anymore. So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt to the circumstances.” If Leno sees “somebody who’s really hurt by something I did, that’s not my job. The idea is to get them to laugh.”
It feels weird saying this, but: good job, Jay Leno!
(Via the Los Angeles Times)
