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May 26, 2012

Jay Leno apologizes for gay remarks from Phillippe interview

by Allison Waldman, posted Apr 2nd 2008 11:38AM

LenoYou would think since Don Imus and his dumb attempt at humor got him kicked off of MSNBC that TV personalities would think before they joke. You would like to think that's true -- but it's not. In the latest bit of amazing insensitivity and stupidity, NBC's Jay Leno has apologized for a gay gag.

The star of Tonight was chatting with Ryan Phillippe the other night about the star's new film Stop-Loss. Thanks to some crack researcher on the Tonight writing staff, Jay decided to ask Ryan about one of his earliest acting jobs -- playing Billy Douglas, a closeted, gay teenager on One Life to Live struggling with his sexual identity. In a flip way, Leno asked Ryan to show him what it was like when he was playing gay. He said, "Can you give me your gayest look? Say that camera is Billy Bob... Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming."

Phillippe was clearly taken aback and refused to play along. Now, Jay Leno has been dressed down by GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and he has responded with an apology. "In talking about Ryan's first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong. I certainly didn't mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize."

It's perfectly fine for Mr. Leno to apologize after the fact, much like Mr. Imus did after slurring the Rutgers women's basketball players by calling them "nappy-headed hos." But it doesn't change the fact that the inappropriate joke that came to Imus's mind was as offensive as the Leno bit about homosexuality. If he was an enlightened as he probably thinks he is, the idea for the joke would have never made it out of the writers' room.

If anyone on the Tonight writing team had checked, they would have learned that Phillippe's role on One Life to Live was groundbreaking. His character eventually came to terms with being gay thanks to the help of a minister, Reverend Andrew Carpenter, whose brother died of AIDS. The storyline culminated with one of the most poignant and memorable scenes every shown on daytime -- the presentation of the AIDS quilt in Llanview. I remember it well; it was amazingly effective and great television.

Sadly, Mr. Leno's faux pas is just another example of really embarrassing television.

[via Pop Candy]

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24 Comments

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Michael 8-)

I don't think it's about Leno just making a joke... Have other commenters actually seen the segment? The whole thing is just... bizarre. And I think GLAAD gets it wrong. I wasn't offended by the joke of "give me your gayest look." That actually made sense in the context of the conversation. What was bizarre was that Leno pushed it, although Phillippe was clearly uncomfortable, and he makes the weird Brokeback-esque Billy Bob reference, which took it into the tasteless and mildly offensive realm. I'm not really sure how anyone in the writers' room thought that one would be funny...

April 03 2008 at 6:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gt

next time i hear any joke about marriage to the other sex et al, i will protest. i am very sensitive about my heterosexuality!

April 02 2008 at 5:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff

So some of you think it's okay to make jokes about gay people? No harm, it's all in good fun, right?

Fine. Give us the right to get married, give us employment protection, and guarantee that no more teenagers will get beaten up or commit suicide for being gay.

Once you've done that, you can get back to making gay jokes.

April 02 2008 at 5:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
James

Playing on stereotypes is not the problem; it's more of Jay's attitude toward gays and women in general that annoys the sh*t about out of me. Night in and night out, he speaks to all women like they belong in a kitchen, and gays like they all belong at a spa or something. I don't think he means anything malevolent about it, but his jokes and remarks are so boneheaded and chauvinistic I can't believe anyone finds him at all tolerable, let alone funny.

April 02 2008 at 3:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

Ryan Phillippe played a gay guy on a soap in 1992 and was on the Tonight Show to promote his 2008 film Stop-Loss and Jay Leno could think of nothing else to talk about but to get him to show how a gay guy would act in a certain scenario.

April 02 2008 at 3:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

"This political correctness is killing us. Jokes, people, jokes!!!"

So according to you, we should do away with political correctness? And that means it will be alright for us to make jokes about black people and we can use the "n" word as long as its a joke?

April 02 2008 at 3:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eric H

I hate Jay Leno but I have to say this was clearly meant as a joke, maybe not funny, but still a joke, if it were reversed would it still be such an uproar?

April 02 2008 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Neal

It was a JOKE people. We really need to get our sense of humor back in this country. This political correctness is killing us. Jokes, people, jokes!!!

April 02 2008 at 1:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eugene

So.... you're saying that language and behaviour is directly tied to one's ethnicity and/or skin color? Look it up, THAT'S CALLED RACISM.

Either it's okay for EVERYBODY to do it, or it's not okay for anyone to do it. To run around using offensive language because you happen to be "in" whatever social group and then blasting other people who you deem "out" of the social group is just another form of racism or bigotry.

Of course, in america, racism/bigotry/sexism has been so completely reinvented so that it can ONLY apply to white protesant males... so hell, I know I'm talking to a brick wall here.

April 02 2008 at 1:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Eugene's comment
Ster

What seems fair to me is that those that have reinvented words to some extent so that they feel comfortable using them to describe themselves then they should be the only ones allowed to use them without concern for context. But anyone outside of that group should be careful of context. Jay's comments where not any kind of a play on a stereotype, so it seems petty that GLAAD would come out to flog him down.

April 02 2008 at 2:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eugene

How does that make any sense? If those words are so offensive when a white person says it, or straight, or christian or purple bug eater, whatever, why is it okay for anyone to use it?

In university, we would have this debate over the N word all the time. We would hear, "well, white people invented the word to keep down African Americans, so that's why they can't use it. It's a symbol of oppression."

So... by that reasoning, can Asians call African Americans the N word? Asian Americans never owned slaves, so we're cool, right?

By continuing to draw distinctions such as what group can use which word, all we're doing is keeping racism alive. The mentality behind saying some word is for "minorities only" is exactly the same as the mentality behind "for whites only".

April 02 2008 at 3:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Duane

The only stereotypes you're not allowed to play with, apparently, are those big enough to have Alliances who will publicly come out and smack you down. I'm sure that every monologue Jay does results in letters written by individuals saying "As a miner, I was offended by your joke and demand an apology." But that alone does not get them the media coverage, therefore they don't typically get an apology.

Leno is a bit different than Imus, though, and is known for apologizing at the least offense:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060315/leno_apology_060315/20060315?hub=Entertainment

He made a joke about the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg after the Lincoln assassination...and then later apologized to the family of the doctor.

(Which reminds me of my favorite Johnny Carson bit where during the monologue, if he made a Lincoln joke, every time without fail the audience would groan. Then he'd pause and say, "Too soon?")

April 02 2008 at 1:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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