Jacko or Jay: Who’s the Creepy Clown?

The Roman satirist Juvenal coined the term “bread and circuses” to describe the mixture of feast and spectacle Rome’s ruling class used to maintain power over the masses. Today, “circus” is the word that best describes Michael Jackson’s child-molestation trial, both the atmosphere surrounding the courthouse and the spectacle of the trial itself. But there is a seedier carnival of Jacksonian entertainment playing out in the media, notably on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Leno was subpoenaed as a witness in the trial, and thus could have come under the judge’s gag order forbidding participants to comment to the media. The gag rule was a comic bonanza for Leno, who invited guest comedians to deliver the one-liners he could not. On March 11, the gag order was lifted, and Leno is now free to tell as many Jackson gags as he and his writers can dream up -- and to assume in the jokes that Jackson is guilty.

The day the ban ended, Leno devoted that night’s entire monologue to Jackson.

“The Tonight Show” was in reruns last week. I hope Leno used his time off to change his approach to the entire circus of trials about which he has made increasingly bloodthirsty “jokes.” From Scott Peterson and Robert Blake to Jackson, Leno has been chortling about such topics as electrocution and prison rape. On March 11, Leno even jested about the possibility of Jackson attempting suicide.

Internal contradictions make this TV circus both creepy and compelling. Leno has also been telling a lot of jokes about sex between female teachers and their young male students, along the lines of, “Hey, why wasn’t it like this when I was in seventh grade and could have scored?”

And the visiting Jackson-bashers seemed strangely awkward and dispirited when delivering their gags. With physical peculiarities of their own -- Roseanne Barr, for instance, said Jackson is the only person in the United States who has had more plastic surgery than she has; Carrot Top’s stage persona is as weird as Jackson’s -- and possibly some insight into the twists of celebrity fortune, these comedians may have realized they could easily become the butts of such jokes, rather than the bearers.

Why has the usually witty and genial Leno become the spokesman for humor that is cruel, homophobic and macabre?

Juvenal would say circuses function to distract the populace from bad economic and political news, and we sure have plenty of that. Hollywood insiders, who are even more cynical than Juvenal, would say it is all about ratings. I suspect that political jokes about President Bush are now risky. It’s Bush’s second term and Leno is still telling Monica Lewinsky jokes. In any case, watching the mean and ugly side of American culture played for laughs every night is disturbing. If I weren’t on Atkins, I’d prefer the bread.