April 2, 2008
Jay Leno: Still an Anti-Gay Asshat
In the latest in a long history of stupid, homophobic “jokes,” unfunny “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno asked guest Ryan Phillippe: “Can you give me, like — say that camera is your gay lover …”
And then, notes People — where you can see a video of the incident:
Despite Phillippe’s instant discomfort, Leno went on to say, “Can you give me your ‘gayest look’? Say that camera is Billy Bob — Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.”“Wow,” replied Phillippe, 33. “That is so something I don’t want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or … ?”
“No,” said Leno. “I got more stuff. This is the least of it.”
The least of it? No, just the latest of it.
Leno has long been compelled to take cheap shots at the gay community. Typical: Back in 2001 (in a double homophobic-sexist crack), he opined that if Popeye and Bluto find Olive Oyl attractive, they must be gay.
When Brokeback Mountain hit movie screens, Leno went utterly berserk with the anti-gay cracks, night after night after night.
And those are just the first two incidents that come to mind right now.
In 2006, Leno was taken to task by Avenue Q playwright Jeff Whitty:
When you think of gay people, it’s funny. They’re funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They’re sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.Gay people, to you, are great material.
Mr. Leno, let me share with you my view of gay people:
When I think of gay people, I think of the gay news anchor who took a tire iron to the head several times when he was vacationing in St. Martin. I think of my friend who was visiting Hamburger Mary’s, a gay restaurant in Las Vegas, when a bigot threw a smoke bomb filled with toxic chemicals into the restaurant, leaving the staff and gay clientele coughing, puking, and running in terror. I think of visiting my gay friends at their house in the country, sitting outside for dinner, and hearing, within hundreds of feet of where we sat, taunting voices yelling “Faggots.” I think of hugging my boyfriend goodbye for the day on 8th Avenue in Manhattan and being mocked and taunted by passing high school students.
When I think of gay people, I think of suicide. I think of a countless list of people who took their own lives because the world was so toxically hostile to them. Because of the deathly climate of the closet, we will never be able to count them. You think gay people are great material. I think of a silent holocaust that continues to this day. I think of a silent holocaust that is perpetuated by people like you, who seek to minimize us and make fun of us and who I suspect really, fundamentally wish we would just go away.
When I think of gay people, I think of a brave group that has made tremendous contributions to society, in arts, letters, science, philosophy, and politics. I think of some of the most hilarious people I know. I think of a group that has served as a cultural guardian for an ungrateful and ignorant America.
I think of a group of people who have undergone a brave act of inventing themselves. Every single out-of-the-closet gay person has had to say, “I am not part of mainstream society.” Mr. Leno, that takes bigger balls than stepping out in front of TV-watching America every night. I daresay I suspect it takes bigger balls to come out of the closet than anything you have ever done in your life.
I know you know gay people, Mr. Leno. Are they just jokes to you, to be snickered at behind their backs? Despite the angry tenor of my letter, I suspect you’re a better man than that. I don’t bother writing letters to the “God Hates Fags” people, or Donald Wildmon, or the pope. But I think you can do better. I know it’s The Tonight Show, not a White House press conference, but you reach a lot of people.
In a CNN interview (which you can watch at the link above), it was noted that Whitty’s letter caught Leno’s “attention” — but did anything change?
Nope. Last year, Leno was tickled by “the gay bomb.” As recently as late February, Leno did a “Jaywalking” segment in San Francisco, in which he stopped people on the street, asked them questions, and had his studio audience guess whether they were gay or straight. Watch the video.
And now…
And now, Leno has apologized — for, as Hecklerspray so aptly puts it, being an unfunny tool:
Of course, Jay Leno is absolutely right to apologise to his offended viewers. As others have commented, Jay Leno wouldn’t have dreamt of asking Ryan Phillippe to pull his blackest face or his Jewiest face, would he?
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Filed under: Celebrities, Homophobia, Television
