Jay Leno thinks comedy has gotten too political for its own good.
During an interview with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute that came out on Sunday, the former host of “The Tonight Show” explained why he thinks leaning too far to the left or to the right has put comics in what he said was “not a very good situation.”
While Leno said he wasn’t opposed to a political punchline, he told the foundation’s president, former Lockheed Martin executive David Trulio, that these days, comics risk alienating their audience by having too much of an ideological bent.
“I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from things, you know, the pressures of life or whatever it may be,” he said. “And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but what happens is people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”
“I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture,” he added.
Leno addressed the practical pitfalls of only taking shots at one side, wondering, “Why shoot for half an audience? Why not try to get the whole? I like to bring people into the big picture.”
“I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group,” the stand-up veteran went on. “Or just don’t do it at all. I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.”
During his run on primetime, which lasted over two decades, Leno said he relished in being criticized by both Republicans and Democrats … sometimes over the same exact jokes.
“It was fun to me when I got hate letters: ‘You and your Republican friends’ [or] ‘Well, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’… over the same joke,” he recalled.
“I go, ‘Well, that’s good.’ That’s how you get a whole audience. [Nowadays], you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion.”
Leno’s comments come amid questions about whether “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert’s program was canceled for political reasons.
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News his show was going off the air was announced not long after he took aim at his network CBS’s parent company, Paramount, after it agreed to donate millions to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library while it was in the midst of trying to get his administration to approve a merger with the entertainment giant Skydance.
In a statement, CBS contended that “The Late Show’s” cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
