Jay Leno Says That He Never Got in Trouble for Joking About the ‘Perfect’ Monica Lewinsky Scandal
When Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves following his brief suspension by ABC, he made it a point to thank his fellow late night talk show hosts, noting that “even Jay reached out” with a message of support.
Obviously he was referring to Jay Leno, the ex-Tonight Show host who, just six months ago, was still grumbling about the time Kimmel “humiliated” him on his own show.
This wasn’t necessarily a given, considering that Kimmel’s antipathy towards the Collison Course star was so intense that he once hosted an entire episode of his show in full Leno cosplay.
Now Leno has been asked to weigh in on the controversy during an appearance on Spike's Car Radio, hosted by former Seinfeld writer Spike Feresten. “I’m a free speech guy. It’s as simple as that,” Leno stated, admitting that Kimmel’s return to TV was “a big moment for free speech advocates.”
But Leno was also quick to try and de-politicize the controversy, randomly pointing out that comedians in New York used to have to carry Cabaret Cards up until 1967. “If you used an obscenity, or said something a policeman did not like, he could come on stage, tear up your card and you didn’t work,” Leno explained. “You didn't go on stage anywhere. So it’s not new.”
After joking that “ABC stands for Anything But Courageous,” Leno was asked whether or not he ever got any pushback from his network about political Tonight Show monologues, specifically during the Bill Clinton sex scandal.
“That was just men behaving badly,” Leno argued. “That was the perfect scandal, because ‘Oooh, it’s naughty.’ It’s that kind of deal. It’s like Hugh Grant; ‘Oh a handsome guy. Oh with a streetwalker. Oh it’s interracial.’ It has all the elements that make it ‘spicy’ without doing any real harm to anybody.”
Putting aside the fact that he apparently uses the word “streetwalker” unironically, Leno laughing off the Clinton scandal as just a wacky mishap that didn’t harm anyone willfully ignores the fact that Leno’s jokes disproportionately targeted the one civilian involved in the incident, Monica Lewinsky. And, as we’ve mentioned before, she’s still understandably ticked off about the “many, many cruel jokes” he made about her on national television.
Of course the President didn’t enlist the FCC to go after Leno in his ‘90s, because his meanest jokes targeted someone who had absolutely no political power to abuse! Leno also theorized that “the weird thing about any of this is, if the joke is really funny, it’s okay. Because people just don’t want their time wasted.”
Wow, Leno’s thoughts on this matter are almost as tone-deaf and useless as the ones we just heard from the current Tonight Show host.