Leno's Obsession Jay Leno makes our Hall of Shame for his continued anti-Catholic hate speech. The instances of his bigoted jokes are too numerous to track, he has never been a friend of the Catholic Church. But this recent deluge of attacks seems to be precipitated from the Popes release of the Driver’s Ten Commandments. One of the Pope’s comments included:
Cars particularly lend themselves to being used by their owners to show off, continues the report, and as a means for outshining other people and arousing a feeling of envy. People thus identify themselves with their cars and project assertion of their egos onto them. When we praise our cars we are, in fact, praising ourselves, because they belong to us and, above all, we drive them. Many motorists, including the not so young, boast with great pleasure of records broken and high speeds achieved, and it is easy to see that they cannot stand being considered as bad drivers, even though they may acknowledge that they are.
Leno seemed to take personal offense of this. On the 19th, the day the document was released, or the next day, the 20th, Leno’s revenge began. He remarked about this statement of showing off and accused the Pope of hypocrisy because of his car. Of course the difference that Leno failed to mention was that the Pope popemobile is a utility car, not a show-case car. Its bubble is to protect the Pope from being killed as he greets the Faithful from the car. This is hardly the same thing as Leno’s hobby of buying millions of dollars of antique cars and regularly showing them off, with almost daily reference to them on the Tonight Show. And since then, the onslaught has begun. We offer a sampling below with a summary at the end by the Catholic League. June 22, 2007 On NBC's Tonight Show June 20th, Jay Leno (who frequently makes jokes casting all priests as sex abusers), suggested that the 11th commandment of driving should be Thou shalt not use your car to transfer pedophile priests to another parish. The crowd booed. For the second day in a row, NBC's Jay Lenowho frequently tars all priests with the pedophile brushtook a shot at the Catholic clergy. In his opening monologue on June 21 airing of The Tonight Show, Leno joked: In Austin, Texas, a 61-year-old priest has been arrested after he left rehab. This priest leaves rehab, gets drunk and drives his car into a restaurant. So much for the Vatican's Ten Commandments of safe driving. Imagine that, a priest driving drunk into a restaurant. Thank God it was not a Chuck E. Cheese. Oh my God. Just like they did the night before, the audience groaned at Leno's cliche©d and bigoted stereotyping. It clearly isn't the laughter of his fans that is driving his relentless jabs at the Catholic clergy. So what is it, Mr. Leno? [Source: Catholic League Chatterbox] July 23, 2007 Leno continues his bashing of the Catholic Church at any opportunity The most recent bigoted remark was tonight. This time Leno was remarking on the popularity of the seventh volume of Harry Potter. He then said that priest were using the book as bait. A few minutes later Leno mentioned the priest who embezzled money from his parish and used part of the money for a male stripper. Leno said that he was cheating on his altar boys. Despite boos from the audience when he makes jokes like these, he continues on unashamed. That makes him a true bigot and a participant in evil. No matter how Leno spews his hate speech, no one seems to care and no outrage is heard when other TV or radio media personalities are nearly crucified for their bigoted remarks about blacks or Jews. There is obviously a double-standard. Leno is the Teflon Bigot; it all just falls off of him. If other media personalities are to be fired from their jobs due to their hate-speech antics, why not Leno? The Catholic League issued this press release July 24, 2007: In the past five weeks, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno has ridiculed priests six times and the pope once; all of the priest jokes were sexual in nature and painted priests as molesters. June 18: Robin Williams gets into an extended diatribe about priests as pedophiles June 20: Leno cracks a joke about priests as pedophiles June 21: Leno makes a joke about a drunken pedophile priest July 12: Leno ridicules the pope for restating Catholic doctrine on salvation July 18: Leno portrays all priests as pedophiles July 23: Leno jokes about priests using the Harry Potter books as bait to lure kids July 23: Leno tells a story about a priest who pays to see a male stripper at a gay nightclub and jokes that the priest was cheating on his altar boy Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows: Hypocritical priests make for good script, but in the world Jay Leno apparently lives in, priests have a monopoly on hypocrisy. This would seem to suggest that either he is clueless about other expressions of hypocrisy, or there is a strong animus against Catholicism at work. If it's the former, the Catholic League can be of assistancewe track lots of hypocrites, many of whom live in Leno's Hollywood backyard. If it's the latter, we suggest he knock it off. Leno is fast becoming the Hall of Shamer of the Year, or more accurately, Bigot of the Year.