Jay Leno Bombs at White House Dinner: Take This Comic, Please

Death be not proud – especially when it is on stage in Washington in front of 3,000 reporters, government officials and B-list celebrities. Not since Jay Leno moved to prime time has there been a comic disaster to rival ... well ... Jay

Leno's performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Maybe Leno's problem was his position on the night's lineup as the closing act following Barack Obama, a president whose natural humor is not so much understated as dehydrated. Obama – whose arsenal clearly includes witty writers as well as predator drones – proved to be the master of the sly one-liner. The gags ranged from his crack about his poll numbers ("I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth") to his artful skewering of the Politico (a mock headline after V-J Day: "Japan Surrenders – Where's the Bounce?").

Leno's humor was about as edgy as a Bob Hope USO routine. Typical was this (stop me if you've heard it before) bit about Obama: "He has had a share of stress. Tough economy, two wars, health care fight, Iran, North Korea, his mother-in-law moving in with him. I think that would break most men." Nothing like a good mother-in-law joke to feel so 21st century.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/02/jay-leno-bombs-at-white-house-dinner-take-this-comic-please/print/

embarrassingly out of step with the times, and still trying to coax laughs out of people who no longer see them as even slightly humorous..the laughter was out of embarrassment..

and I enjoyed it. I thought he was very good and I appreciate the fact that he went out of his way to do that.


I'm with Jay here, sorry. Maybe he wasn't very funny because he wasn't Colbert ripping on The Shrub. I assume he could have been rougher with our President to try and get more laughs.

It was just some entertainment at a stupid dinner for rich drunk media people, who care?

I liked his jokes, maybe they weren't edgy enough for the crowd, maybe they liked it better when it was Don Imus making fun of Bill Clinton.

In any case, I appreciated the comedy, and I especially liked where President Obama could display his keen sense of humor, I enjoyed where he took a couple of swipes at the birthers.