Jay Leno is a homophobe.- Page 3

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/17/08 at 2:42pm

" I really don't get the attitude that the best gay man is the one who acts the most straight."

No one said that.

All I said was that Jay was using him.

"His appearance on THE VIEW was definitely uncomfortable, and the way he was treated by the other women was disgusting."

How did they treat him? I didn't see it?

[cmleidi]

Posted: 2/17/08 at 2:56pm

Theatrediva, I never said anyone in particular on this board was against Ross because he was not straight acting, but it is a reaction I've definitely seen. It speaks to a pecking order in the gay community with drag queens and Ross types at the lowest rungs.

The View women treated him as if he were an alien from space and reacted to him like he was "this poor, feminine man." Walters was particularly condescending, but then she's like that to most people. I felt bad for him.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/17/08 at 3:12pm

Being an ex-drag queen, I have no idea what 'rung' you are talking about.


I was practically carried on the shoulders of my fellow homos! (Well, they did a few times).

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 3:33am

I can remember one episode where Keifer Sutherland was the guest and he was imitating some of the lines from the 24 video game. One of his yells came out kind of high pitched. Keifer said something like "that's angry Jack" and Leno said, "No, I think that's gay Jack."

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 9:23am

Jeff Whitty, Tony Award Winning librettist of AVENUE Q, wrote this letter to Jay Leno on April 19th, 2006:

Dear Mr. Leno,

My name is Jeff Whitty. I live in New York City. I'm a playwright and the author of Avenue Q, which is a musical currently running on Broadway. I've been watching your show a bit, and I'd like to make an observation:

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.

I caught your show when you had a tired mockery of Brokeback Mountain, involving something about a horse done up in what you consider a "gay" way. Man, that's dated. I turned the television off and felt pretty ****ing depressed. And now I understand your gay-baiting jokes have continued.

Mr. Leno, I have a sense of humor. It's my livelihood. And being gay has many hilarious aspects to it—none of which, I suspect, you understand. I'm tired of people like you. When I think of gay people, I think of centuries of suffering. I think of really, really good people who've been gravely mistreated for a long time now.

You've got to cut it out, Jay.

Sincerely,

Jeff Whitty

New York, N.Y.
The Letter

[Unknown User]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 11:05am

Leno has no vision beyond filling his stomach and filling his gas tank.

[Jane2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 11:19am

Listen everyone, the amount of times I've watched either the Letterman show or the Leno show is maybe 6 times per year. So, let's say I watched Leno three times per year. I never heard him make a gay joke those three times. I simply thought he was funny in general.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 1:59pm

I've never found Leno funny. Not once. I do think Ross the Intern is hilarious, however. Ross is comfortable with himself, learned how to laugh at himself and use his effeminate manner as an asset and comedic style. I don't find him offensive as he knows exactly what he's doing and how he comes across. People make it sound like he's being unwittingly exploited, which would mean he's unaware of why people are laughing. He knows why they're laughing and he's using it to his advantage. Good for him.

Leno, on the other hand, is one of those cocky stand-up comedians who believes that when the audience laughs under the control of a stage manager and a "laughter" sign, that the laughter is actually genuine. I think the decision to make him host was premature and unwise. Now, he's just cocky and conceited and comes across as the drunk letch loudmouth self-deluded life-of-the-party clown everyone hopes will either leave or pass out.

[Jane2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:11pm

"I think the decision to make him host was premature and unwise. "

I wonder if NBC thinks so. I heard that Jay beats Dave in the ratings.

[Pippin]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:17pm

yeah, Dave beat Jay at first, until Jay had on Hugh Grant right after he got in trouble with the law on that prostitution bust in the mid-nineties, and Jay has been on top ever since.

I thought that it would finally turn around when Dave was able to have his writers for the strike, but the ratings stayed pretty much the same. Just goes to show there is no accounting for taste in America.

[Calvin]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:21pm

I think I've said this before on here, but I was given a ticket to one of Leno's standup acts in Atlantic City a few years ago.

Not only was he still doing incredibly stale celebrity potshots -- Michael Jackson and Robert Blake, who hasn't been in the news since goodness knows when -- but he was still doing "My parents don't know how to operate a VCR" jokes. In 2004.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:21pm

I doubt NBC thinks so, but Jay has ridden the coattails of success of The Tonight Show. The show itself is an American icon regardless the host. It's also how Saturday Night Live has continued to run for so long. I don't think it has anything to do with the cast or quality. I believe it is brand recognition.

[Jane2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:23pm

"Just goes to show there is no accounting for taste in America."

thanks! have mercy-I'm the one lone soul here who thinks he's funny!

[Pippin]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:25pm

haha.

not you Jane!! I know you have taste because you post on the off-topic board of BWW. It's everyone else that likes Leno and never posts here.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:27pm

Okay, I'll say it...

Jay Leno has more viewers because he panders to the lowest commen denominator.

His jokes are corny, middle America garbage that most of the country can understand.

You have to be a thinker with Letterman, which is why most people don't get him, and when I mean 'most people' I mean those people who keeps shows like 'Flavor Of Love' on the air.

[Jane2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:29pm

Ok, thanks Pippin! I know I'm totally in the minority here, but I have to speak my mind. Maybe I should watch the show again to make sure I still think he's funny. At least the headlines that people send in are funny, and I like the way Jay reads them.

[Pippin]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:32pm

I agree with you there, Jane. I do get a chuckle out of the Headlines segment, and the "Jaywalking" segment, but that's mostly from the stupidity of people's answers, not really out of Jay's retorts.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:36pm

Exactly Pippipn,

Leno is not funny. He uses others to get his laughs.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:41pm

Remember when he made Kathy Griffin cry?

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:43pm

He WHAT?!


I don't watch him, so I didn't know. Is it on YouTube?

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 2:57pm

Oh, Please, Jeff Whitty. We all know this stuff, but really, your ultra stereotypical gay characters in Avenue Q????

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 3:05pm

Remember when he made Kathy Griffin cry?

Well, to be fair, I'm a huge Kathy Griffin fan, but that was just a case of not being able to take what you dish out. even she doesn't really know why she cried about it.

From the Kathy Griffin website:

Last season, after Jay Leno teased that a shot of her posing with model Carmen Electra looked like a before-and-after photo, Griffin broke down in tears on the way home. "I was being a dumb girl," she says now. "Some days that stuff will roll right off my back, and other days it will totally crush me. I have no explanation for it. I wish I could be a guy."

Updated On: 2/18/08 at 03:05 PM

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 3:33pm

I don't think her humor and what he said about her are exactly the same thing, but that's just me.

[StickToPriest]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 3:49pm

"You have to be a thinker with Letterman, which is why most people don't get him, and when I mean 'most people' I mean those people who keeps shows like 'Flavor Of Love' on the air."

True. And sad.

And, look, I have nothing against Kathy Griffin. But she makes a living making fun of people. When she cried after Leno made a (not-very-funny) joke about her, she was just getting a taste of her own medicine. If she can't handle it, she needs to go into a new profession ASAP, no matter how funny she might be.

[Jane2]

Posted: 2/18/08 at 3:57pm

"You have to be a thinker with Letterman, which is why most people don't get him,"

I get him. He's not that deep.