On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 8:06 PM Diner <[email protected]> wrote: > I recall back in the 90s or 2000s Jay said in an interview that he once > made a joke on the air about Koreans eating dogs, and a Korean group > complained, so he met with them. When they asked him to apologize, he said > it was his understanding that the joke was based in truth - that people in > Korea actually do eat dogs; their response was that yes, it is true, but > that they didn't want people to talk about it because it was bad for their > image. He said that if it was true they had no right to complain, and that > he would not apologize because it was fair game. > But it's a different world now. >
The other night I got around to listening to Marc Maron’s WTF interview with John Cleese. Near the end they started talking about using race in jokes, then went on to share examples, making each other laugh in the process. Some of them were, indeed, funny. I still maintain there are comics (the obvious example being Don Rickles) who can get away with humor featuring different races, but most cannot. The bulk of Leno’s humor for decades has been simple jokes about stereotypes. As NBC Pages, we used to count how many different jokes he had in his repertoire. I think it topped out at around 20. His monologue was like a Mad Libs. Just swap out the previous night’s celebrity name with that night’s. Swap out one nationality doing something stupid with another. It was so bland and formulaic that it frankly couldn’t be offensive. Leno simply didn’t care enough about the topics of his jokes to actually be prejudiced. > > On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 2:50:47 PM UTC-5, Joe Hass wrote: >> >> Gabrielle Union went to NBC producers earlier this year after guest judge >> Jay Leno made an out-dated, racist joke. They blew her off. Then they >> didn't renew her contact at the end of the year. >> >> >> https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/americas-got-talent-gabrielle-union-julianne-hough-toxic-culture-ousted-judges-1203417447 >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/c4dbea05-d209-41f5-83ab-fba2df89b715%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/c4dbea05-d209-41f5-83ab-fba2df89b715%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4ARh7u25AMf%3DT0AeCdpRymmrWFyK-7bZNh%3DZbLb1A2BSA%40mail.gmail.com.
