Cancel culture is changing the face of comedy but in a world where veteran comedians are resisting a movement they fear will restrict creative freedom, Jay Leno is taking a different approach.
In an interview with The Washington Times, the 71-year-old former "Tonight Show" icon explained that, rather than complain about the situation, he is instead taking a service-delivery approach and making adjustments to his work according to the changing of the times.
"When I do a gig in Utah and they’ll go, 'Look, we don’t want any drug jokes, we don’t want any sex jokes,'" he told the outlet. "I go, 'OK, I’ll take those out' and I do something else. With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden the sexist jokes everybody used to do, you can’t do anymore. So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt to the circumstances."
Leno is not a stranger to cancel culture. Earlier this year he apologized to the Asian community amid backlash over what many said were anti-Asian jokes he had made throughout the years.
In 2002, he joked about South Korean speed skater Kim Dong Sung eating dogs. He continued to make similar jokes for the next decade. In 2012, "America's Got Talent" judge Gabrielle Union came forth with allegations that Leno made a similar joke during his stint on the show. When he saw a painting of fellow judge Simon Cowell with his dogs, Leno said the animals looked like food from a Korean restaurant, according to a report by Variety.
In his apology, Leno explained that when he made the jokes there was a "prevailing attitude that some group is always complaining about something," and the general approach was to either deal with it or have a "screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke" attitude.
"Too many times I sided with the latter even when in my heart I knew it was wrong," he said, according to TheWrap. "That is why I am issuing this apology. I do not consider this particular case to be another example of cancel culture, but a legitimate wrong that was done on my part."
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