Good-Guy Leno Tells Some Mean Jokes

In the article “Has He Stepped Out of the Shadow?” (Calendar, May 23), Lawrence Christon concludes that Jay Leno is a lousy interviewer but a swell guy. Am I the only one to notice the not-so-swell personal level of his nightly attacks on President Clinton? Example: “When will Bill Clinton have sex in the White House?” Answer: “As soon as Hillary leaves town.”

As near as I can tell, it started to get ugly after Clinton guested on Arsenio’s show during last year’s election campaign. That night--and for nights thereafter--Leno vowed that no politicians would appear on his show.

What did appear was an interminable sketch of Clinton as a fat Elvis wanna-be. The sketches and jokes that followed all had the same message: Clinton as a womanizing rake, a hopeless “Goober” from the Southern sticks. And that was before he even took office.

Once he became President, all bets were off. Nothing seemed beyond the pale, even Bosnia. “Why is it,” Leno mused, “that whenever a President slips in the polls, he thinks about a war?” Curiously, when it came to Ross Perot, Leno broke his “no politicians” rule. In two appearances, he did everything but sit in Perot’s lap, all the while letting him spout homilies and plug his book. For Ross, he was ever the gracious, softball host.

But, on a recent show, Leno sank to an all-time low. For once, the subject wasn’t Clinton, but Rush Limbaugh. What, you may wonder, could anyone say about this master of conservative hyperbole that could be both outrageous and unfair? The joke, verbatim from NBC archives:

“And conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh is gonna be at a festival in Colorado this weekend. They’re comparing it to a conservative Woodstock. I’ll tell you something. I hope it doesn’t rain like Woodstock. If there’s one person I don’t want to see naked holding a candle in the rain, it’s Rush Limbaugh.

“That’s kind of a funny analogy, don’t you think? A conservative Woodstock? I mean, the last time that many conservatives got together I think it was in Berlin, about 1933.”

Leno called Limbaugh the next day to apologize, and Limbaugh crowed about it on his radio broadcast all morning. Rest assured, for Leno there will be few, if any, future Limbaugh jokes--the point somehow being that, unlike the President, right-wing mouthpieces like Limbaugh are not to be trifled with.

And that’s too bad, because if Leno wants to consider himself a political satirist, he needs to get out of Clinton’s hypothetical bedroom, off the cheap shots and onto some kind of historical perspective and balance--two things that are sorely missing from his monologue.

Leno’s jokes reach more Americans than anyone else’s. Yet, what are his core beliefs and values? Judging from his relentless Clinton bashing and appalling Limbaugh/conservative swipe, they are twofold: personal vendetta and “anything for a laugh.” Not exactly the ingredients for a great and long career.