Jay Leno Seemingly Defends Cancel Culture – ‘You Either Change With The Times Or You Die’

Former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno spoke out this week to seemingly defend cancel culture, with the-71 year-old comedian making it clear that it’s not something he’s worried about. 

Leno Defends Cancel Culture 

Leno told the Los Angeles Times that he doesn’t stress about being cancelled. Instead, he changes his material to go with the times and effectively cater to the masses.

“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, I go, ‘OK, I’ll take those out’ and I do something else,” Leno explained.

“With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden the sexist jokes everybody used to do, you can’t do anymore,” he added. “So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt to the circumstances.”

That being said, Leno admitted that he hasn’t always gotten things right.

“If I see somebody who’s really hurt by something I did, that’s not my job,” he said. “The idea is to get them to laugh.”

Related: Chelsea Handler Rants Against ‘White Men’ Who Complain About Cancel Culture

Leno Targeted By Cancel Culture 

Leno found himself being targeted by cancel culture earlier this year, when he was forced to apologize for making an anti-Asian joke while appearing as a guest judge on “America’s Got Talent.”

After seeing a painting of judge Simon Cowell surrounded by dogs, Leno said that it looked like something that would be “on the menu at a Korean restaurant,” which offended “the very few Asian staffers” on the program.

Though the joke was edited out of the show, judge Gabrielle Union later exposed it to the world, landing Leno in hot water.

Guy Aoki, founding member of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, threatened to issue a boycott of Leno’s new game show “You Bet Your Life” if he didn’t apologize for making anti-Asian jokes. Leno ended up apologizing and then calling Aoki personally. 

“After the Zoom meeting, Jay called me back and said, ‘I want to do whatever I can to get back the respect you once had for me,’” Aoki said. “And that meant a lot to me. And then he ended up calling me back 20 times. We had a lot of time to talk about stuff.”

Related: Whoopi Goldberg Torches Cancel Culture – ‘The Truth Doesn’t Seem To Matter’

Leno’s Show Won’t Be Political 

Unlike many others, Leno was able to calm the cancel culture mob down with his apology. And, he’s been permitted to move forward with his game show “You Bet Your Life.”  Leno is reviving the show that ran from 1950 to 1961 and was hosted by Groucho Marx.

In this new interview, Leno pledged that the show will not be heavy with political jokes. 

 “We’ll pair a rapper from Chicago with an Ohio farmer lady, and they work as a team and it’s quite funny to watch,” Leno said. “There’s no politics, there’s no Trump jokes, there’s no Biden jokes. There are jokes about Congress in that generic sort of ‘they’re idiots’ type of thing.”

You would think that someone who was targeted by cancel culture like Leno was would not be so quick to defend it. I guess that since Leno was spared by the ruthless cancel culture mob, he doesn’t think they’re so bad after all.