Whitty versus Leno: Redux

Posted by Dan March 26th, 2008 at 10:03am In The Gays

I came across this clip the other day and I had good intentions of writing about it.

I planned on embedding the clip and saying “What a bastard Jay Leno is! Least funny person ever!”

You know, same old routine.

I would also bring up Jeff Whitty’s remarks from two years ago (which, by the way, I blogged about because this blog is over two years old — holy crap!) where he called Jay out on his easy and (more importantly) unfunny habit of demeaning gay people for laughs.

However, it appears that Whitty himself has beaten me to the punch. He’s reignited his feud with Leno, (rightfully) taking issue with the host’s continual habit of taking cheap shots at gay folks for the least common denominator laughs it will inevitably garner.

Here’s an excerpt:

Not everyone can stomach you, I fear, so for those who can’t, I’ll do a little transcription. You were interviewing Ryan Phillippe, whose first acting job was as a gay teenager on One Life to Live. So naturally you homed in on how WEIRD and HILARIOUS it was that he played a GAY PERSON — while Phillippe reasonably tried to shift the conversation to the larger issue of how weird it was to be on a soap opera.

But you couldn’t be stopped! You went for the comedy gold!

JAY: Can you give me like — say that camera is your gay lover — number two –

PHILLIPPE: Wait a second. Wait a second.

JAY: Can you give me your gayest look? Say that — say that camera is Billy Bob — Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.

(Your sycophantic audience hoots with laughter at the idea of a strapping lad like Phillippe giving a “gay look.”)

PHILLIPPE: Wow. That is so something I don’t want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or –

JAY: No, I got more stuff. This is the least of it.

Read the rest of Whitty’s letter here, along with a picture of him with a flipped bird. It’s good to know that someone is trying to hold Leno accountable for a) his cheap antics at the expense of a certain group of people; b) his awful schtick.