Leno Slammed For Gay Jokes

http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=7b8e4715-7629-4c3e-a221-27cc7137b0b3&k=58744

Published: Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Tony-winning playwright Jeff Whitty has written an open letter to Jay Leno criticizing him for joking about gays. “I know you know gay people, Mr. Leno. Are they just jokes to you, to be snickered at behind their backs?,” he wrote to the Tonight Show host.

Whitty, writer of the Broadway musical Avenue Q, said Leno’s frequent cracks about gays are getting old. He singled out a segment with a saddle made for gay cowboys.
“Man, that’s dated,” Whitty says of the Brokeback Mountain spoof. “I turned the television off and felt pretty f—king depressed.”

Whitty used his letter to remind Leno about the oppression gays and lesbians have lived through – and continue to endure.

“Gay people, to you, are great material,” wrote Whitty. “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. Maarten's. 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.”

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And we have been the world's whipping boy and scape goat since the Babylonians and the Persians!

I don't see Anne Frank being gassed by Nazis. I don't see Jews getting blown up by Arab suicide bombers because of the actions of their government.

When I hear a joke, I don't see people carving swastikas into my car paint job (happened 11 times in HS). I don't see being told "We don't let Jews in the fraternity" back when I was a freshman in college.

I hear a joke. Sh*t, I tell Jewish jokes! I laugh! I laugh because there's a difference between a joke and being called a kike. Just like there's a difference between a joke and being called a faggot!

Sometimes, we need to laugh at ourselves. It's healthy.

And before people start getting on me about being insensitive. . .who else but the Jews have been treated as shitty for the past 3000 years of Western Civilization.

In my book he isn't good enough to shine Johnny's shoes.

But that's just me. I used to watch Johnny all the time. Since he retired I've watched Leno a total of once, and that's because it was on one time while I was in a hospital waiting room. The guest was Tommy Chong, so it was worthwhile.

Johnny could leave a joke unsaid and be funnier than Jay when he's trying his hardest.

IMO.

..I think of the Krispy Kreme massacre of 1998...

No, really I just laugh. Lighten up, Francis. Are you writing to "Will & Grace" too?