I ran across this story via The Advocate website that struck me as what can happen if we take ourselves too seriously.
A writer named Jeff Whitty (he wrote the musical Avenue Q which is currently playing on Broadway) wrote an open letter to Jay Leno, the long-time host of The Tonight Show, expressing his view that Leno's gay jokes were hurtful.
In his letter, Whitty speaks of discrimination and atrocities suffered by GLBT people. He refers to Leno's gay jokes as "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. " To his credit, Leno did respond to Whitty, but apparently no accord was reached.
Readers here may or may not be fans of Leno (I am), but anyone who has even casually watched his stand-up comedy over the years or his monologues on the Tonight Show knows that nothing is off limits. After all, presidents have been assasinated yet ones from both parties are frequent targets of Leno's material.
In my opinion, any group making Leno's monologue has taken a step toward mainstream acceptance, which I understand is a primary goal of the GLBT community. Comedian Jim David offers his take in The Advocate, one which is similar to mine.
My suggestion is for folks to not take themselves so seriously. There are some terrible things going on in this world but it's still okay to laugh at others and be laughed at ourselves.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I feel like you have a balanced handle on this. It's true, Leno gives pretty much equal opportunity to all groups. It's simply his routine.
ReplyDeleteThe complaint by the person in your editorial reminds me of Isaac Hayes who voices the chef on South Park. He recently said he would quit because of dialog where his character on the show was made to put down Scientologists, because he himself is a Scientologist, and that he didn't believe it was right to put down any faith or religion. But his response doesn't hold water because of all the other faiths that his chef character previously slammed on the show. So he didn't take issue with it until it hit close to home, only then did he become defensive.
To me, it's either all or nothing - either laugh at everyone, including yourself, or laugh at no one. The latter option is a little boring for my tastes :)