Jay Leno Should Not Have Gone There

El Chin-O
I've never really spent too much time watching the late-night "talk" shows. Even though I usually like stand-up comedy and silly stunts, I've never been a fan of watching "celebrities" come in, answer a few ridiculous softball type questions from the fawning host (Leno, O'Brien, Letterman, et.al) and promote pimp the "guest's" latest... fill-in the blank here (movie, tv series, book, baby, comic-book, whatever).

But here in our home in the east, my television-watching choices are, as they say, limited. And even though we have plans for New Year's Eve, we were at home last evening. The WifeWonk and TeenWonk were in another room reading, and I was at this computer, visiting some of my blogging friends.

As back ground noise, I could hear a pre-Christmas re-run of Jay Leno. He was giving his front-of-the-show monologue. I really wasn't paying any attention until he started "cracking-wise" about child-molester (and ex-teacher/model) Debra Beasley Lafave and what she did to her 12-year-old victim.

(We have extensively profiled predator Lafave here at the 'Wonks, and so you can refresh your memory by clicking here.)

Essentially, Leno was making light of the fact that Lafave's former-student-now-victim had been having sexual relations with his teacher. By the time I had reached for my writing pad, Leno had already made a number of remarks, but I did have time to write down a couple of his last absurdities, which gives you a pretty good idea about what the "joke-line" was all about. Leno said:

• "Since Lafave has now plead "not guilty due to insanity," this young man has been having sex with an insane woman." *insert canned laughter here*
• "Who says that school doesn't prepare one for the real world?" *insert more canned laughter here*

Now I know that tasteless jokes are the stock in trade for these late night so-called "talk show" hosts/celeb pimps. In fact, before Letterman became an arrogant multi-zillionaire pin-head, (in his NBC days) I used to think he was sometimes funny.

But some topics really should be considered out of bounds, even for them and child molestation is one such area. We wonder if Leno would have thought that Lafave's crimes would have been so hilarious if it had been his son that had been molested. We don't think so.

And would he dared to have made these tasteless remarks if the molester had been a male teacher and the victim a 12-year-old female student? Can you imagine the public's outrage?

But Leno is another very rich Hollywood entertainer, so nothing will be said. In our society, those people do and say as they please.

On old broadcasts of Saturday Night Live, Adam Sandler used to refer to Jay Leno as "El Chin-O." In the guise of his "Opera Man" character, Sandler would sing that El Chin-O was "Not Funny 'O." We concur in Sandler's assessment.

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