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THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

Leno chortled awkwardly, like a young man who had been invited Jay Leno does not want to win an to meet his future father-in-law’s business partners at the local country club. “No, I didn’t, Mr. Secretary. Oh, yes, yes,” he babbled. “That is quite an attractive buttocks that she has.” argument, score political points or prove Describing the encounter in a recent interview with POLITICO at his “Tonight Show” studio in Burbank, Calif., Leno recalled thinking he’s smart. He just wants laughs. to himself, “This is really just high school; it’s just the guys are older.” Is that still good enough? early a quarter-century later, Leno presumably won’t be nervous as he returns to the Hilton for Saturday night’s dinner. By John F. Harris Nor is there any reason he should be. N After all, this will be his fifth appearance at the dinner — he’s appeared during every administration since Reagan’s. At the ack in 1987, the man hired to crack wise at the annual 1987 dinner, the president was 39 years his senior. This year, the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner had a president will be 11 years his junior. (Leno turned 60 earlier this case of jagged nerves. week, on April 28.) Ronald Reagan was president, and Jay Leno was just Along the way, Leno has gone from being a rising young turning 37 — already a celebrated comic, not yet one entertainer to a hugely wealthy global brand — albeit one that has of the country’s most familiar faces. The egg-shaped become a bit scuffed over time. He will be facing a room full of ballroom of the Washington Hilton, with its dated space- politicians and journalists well aware of his recent stumble in trying age décor, suddenly felt like one of the toughest rooms to launch a prime-time comedy show and his controversy-pocked heB had ever played. return to his longtime “Tonight Show” vehicle. At a pre-dinner reception, a stern-faced man who reminded Leno Yet the logic of Leno for this particular occasion is obvious: The of H.R. Haldeman approached and officiously reminded the comic Correspondents’ Association knows precisely what it is getting. that he would be performing a few feet from the president of the There is no chance that Leno will die on stage, as ’70s-era United States and he had better be respectful — no jokes about impressionist Rich Little did with a Grandpa Simpson-like Reagan. performance that left people shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Then another official appeared with the opposite advice: Loosen There is no chance he will break wind in public, as Don up; the president loves it when people poke fun. Imus did with his acrid routine at the 1996 Radio and Television As he was taking all this in, Leno soon found himself chatting Correspondents’ Association Dinner, during which he insulted both with Reagan himself. A bald, jovial man sidled up beside them. Bill and Hillary Clinton to their faces with cutting remarks about Huddling conspiratorially, Secretary of State George Shultz urged philandering and criminal indictments. that they take a gander across the room. But there is also little chance that he will have the audience “Did you see the ass on Fawn Hall when she walked in here?” howling in hysterics or surprise at his routine — or leave the capital Shultz asked (at least, in Leno’s telling; Shultz did not return a call), buzzing for days over his best lines. purring over the dazzling blonde secretary who had recently vaulted Far more likely, he will get respectable laughs on personalities into the headlines as Oliver North’s document-shredding assistant in and themes that anyone could guess simply from watching his show the Iran-Contra scandal. in recent weeks. ➤

POLITICO 33 THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

Popular, profitable, predictable: Leno is the McDonald’s of humor. The rap on Leno — promoted with zeal by many television reviewers and other cultural critics — is that he represents a bland and anachronistic breed of humor. He wins chuckles with dully amusing jokes at a time when younger competitors like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart serve up provocations and a sharp edge. He aims squarely at a middlebrow mass audience when this very concept is fading. With infinite options for entertainment and news alike, the “People from 1900 till today still laugh when the rich, fat modern audience divides itself into innumerable demographic and ideological niches. guy falls in the puddle. And that’s what you’re trying to find Leno professes to be proud of resisting the trend — both on the “Tonight Show” and during his turns at the correspondents’ dinner. — you’re trying to find that joke. I mean, everybody gets “This is not a bully pulpit,” he told POLITICO. “It’s not power you’re looking for; it’s laughs. And if you’re seeking anything else, then ultimately you fail. If you have any other agenda, other than laughs — whether it’s power, whether billionaires losing a fortune and going to jail. That’s funny to it’s showing how smart you are, whether it’s to impress them with your political acumen or how liberal you are or how conservative you are — then it’s not every possible group that’s out there, in almost any era you working for you.” Leno said he has watched other comedians at the correspondents’ dinner know. You know, a pie in the face is a pie in the face.” — he didn’t offer names — fall short of the mission. “I was watching, and they got no laughs, and they’d come back and go, ‘Boy, we nailed him,’” he said. “No, you didn’t. All you did was put down whoever the elected official was.” Leno has been quoted in occasional articles suggesting that his personal politics tilt more liberal. In the interview, however, he said he is proud of the fact that Accuracy in Media, a conservative group, found that his jokes break evenly between those that come at Republicans’ expense and those that take aim at Democrats. Hillary Clinton thanked Leno in book acknowledgements for his help in writing jokes. And Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly said he considers Leno a “patriot.” Projecting neutrality in an age of hyperpartisanship is the hardest thing about performing at the correspondents’ dinner, Leno said. He is acutely aware of who in the ballroom is laughing at which jokes. “The odd thing about it is you find that Republicans, for whatever reason, seem to be able to laugh at themselves more than Democrats,” he said. During the 2004 dinner, Leno said he heard through the grapevine that John Kerry’s brother was visibly offended when Leno asked the Democratic presidential candidate, “Hey, John — why the long face?”

t Saturday’s dinner, Leno will have a kinship of sorts with the barons of legacy news operations whom he will be entertaining. Leno’s newly reconstituted “Tonight Show” is profitable, but like many news Aorganizations, it is suffering from an aging audience and a declining market share. A recent Los Angeles Times article, citing Nielsen, said the combined late-night audience of ABC, CBS and NBC has shrunk by 20 percent over five years — and by 36 percent in the most profitable 18-to-49 age bracket. Advertising revenue is following a similar trend. John O’Leary, who teaches television history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, calls the challenges of both Leno and the news organizations a vivid sign of the times. “If I talk to my students, none of them watch Leno or [David] Letterman. But they do watch Colbert, and many of them did watch Conan O’Brien,” he said. “I’m at a university where students can get newspapers for free. They’re in stacks. But at the end of the day, there’s still stacks left over. They can tailor their news to get it from different sources and sort of create their own. ... As the audience pie gets sliced thinner and thinner, to them Leno seems kind of irrelevant. That’s their parents’ comedian.” “We don’t have that kind of common culture that we used to do,” O’Leary concluded. Leno doesn’t buy it. He’s planted his professional flag on exactly the opposite assumption. “Comedy hasn’t changed that much,” he said. “People from 1900 till today still laugh when the rich, fat guy falls in the puddle. And that’s what you’re trying to find — you’re trying to find that joke. I mean, everybody gets billionaires losing a fortune and going to jail. That’s funny to every possible group that’s out there, in almost any era you know. “You know, a pie in the face is a pie in the face.” Leno’s political humor — and there is a political segment in every night’s monologue — is often the equivalent of a pie in the face or even a whoopee cushion. The humor comes not so much from the jokes themselves as from giggly repetition of familiar zingers aimed at familiar targets. You know them all — and surely you will hear them all again if you are present on Saturday or watch on C-SPAN. Check out the rat-a-tat of stereotypes in just one show, on Feb. 9. Sarah Palin is dumb. (Because of winter storms, “It was so cold, Sarah Palin had to cancel a speech because she didn’t want to take her gloves off to read.”) Nancy Pelosi is addicted to Botox. (“It was so cold, Nancy Pelosi had to sit in her driveway for 10 minutes defrosting her eyeballs.”) Joe Biden is a gaffe-prone clod. (“And with all this snow, President Obama told all nonessential White House employees they didn’t have to come in. Well, actually, just Joe Biden.”) John Edwards is a sleaze. (“And how about the commercials for Dockers, where the guys in their underwear were singing, ‘I’m wearing no pants.’ I

34 POLITICO THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE thought that was a new John Edwards for President campaign.” Repeat performer There is a long roster of other standbys. President Barack Obama is more hype than achievement (March 24, after health care passed: Obama has This will be Jay Leno’s fifth appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner: The “changed his slogan from ‘Yes We Can’ to ‘Yes We Finally Did Something.’”) comedian has performed during every administration since President Ronald Reagan’s. Washington, D.C., is dysfunctional. George W. Bush is dim. And, inevitably, after all these years, Bill Clinton is a horndog. (March 26: “Secretary of State 2000 Hillary Clinton was down in Mexico earlier this week. Nothing important. She has to go down there every year at this time to drag Bill back from spring break.”) This lowest-common-denominator political humor is harder than it looks, because it requires not assuming too much. “You know, the trick is not to know more than anybody else,” Leno said in the interview. “The trick is to know exactly what everybody else knows.” When it comes to Washington figures, he said, “anybody past secretary of state, people have no idea who you’re talking about.” The most striking theme about a recent visit to Leno’s set is the way that a creative enterprise — making people laugh — has been so thoroughly professionalized. It is a style that evidently is set at the top. Walking into the Burbank studio, Leno’s car — on this day, an antique red Mercedes — is parked just out front, prominently in view of people attending the show. The interview took place in the studio’s green room, an understated place with a couple of couches and a big television. The spokeswoman said he didn’t have a lot of time, but it turned out he had plenty, in large measure because he was so efficient in answering questions and quickly supplying anecdotes (like the Fawn Hall yarn). Everything about the “Tonight Show” production, in fact, seems efficient. Clean-cut young people serve as hosts, directing audience members to their seats. While waiting, the crowd is warmed up by a professional comedian who puts on what is obviously a regular patter and asks the crowd to laugh and 2004 shout (ostensibly to test out the sound system). The monologue’s political shtick included a joke about Chinese President Hu Jintao at the nuclear summit that was a play on the classic Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on first?” During commercial breaks, band percussionist and singer Vicki Randle belts out numbers to keep the crowd loose. That night (April 14), the guest was actor Nicolas Cage, who served up a practiced celebrity banter while publicizing his new movie, an homage to “Batman” called “Kick-Ass.” There was a surprise appearance by 81-year-old Adam West, who played Batman in the ’60s television show. All in all, the show was a reasonably entertaining but almost mechanical production of the sort you might similarly expect on a visit to Disney World. Here and there were glimpses of a more edgy and spontaneous Leno. Asked during the interview if he often has to throw jokes away as too provocative, he answered “every day” and went off the record to tell one relating to a certain scandal in the news combining sex and religion. It was indeed funny — and off the record for good reason. Later, he greeted the audience about 15 minutes before show time, wearing a denim shirt and jeans, and bantered with people in the crowd. There was some quick repartee about a mother’s cleavage-baring dress and a military man’s sloppy attire. It wasn’t Lenny Bruce material, but it was a reminder that before he became a kind of Walter Cronkite of late night, he was regarded as a highly original comedic talent. If the public side of Leno is bland, in other words, it reflects a conscious and disciplined choice on the comedian’s part.

Joseph Boskin, a Boston University professor who has written extensively AP PHOTOS about the history of political humor, said it is not such a bad choice Leno has made. “You may recall that they said the same thing about Bob Hope. Hope had a whole litany of political jokes. Most of the jokes were barbed. The way he presented them took the edge off them. ... When Leno tells political jokes, it’s done with a style that undercuts the edge of the joke.” During the interview, Leno made a not-terribly-surprising admission: He likes nearly all of the politicians he lampoons. “I am one of those naive people who believe everyone goes into this for the right reasons,” he said. “I mean, I like to think that these are decent people who, for whatever reasons, have One imagines, as the years roll by, that Leno may even this point of view. And I try to understand what they are, whether I agree or disagree.” have a bond with the politicians. Like them, he knows the One imagines, as the years roll by, that Leno may even have a bond with the politicians. Like them, he knows the vicissitudes of popularity and the brutality vicissitudes of popularity and the brutality of news cycles. of news cycles. And, like many of them, he has a preternatural drive to perform, to please, to leave them cheering. He is, after all, a man who performs on stages And, like many of them, he has a preternatural drive to dozens of dates each year (including a regular Sunday night stand-up routine at a comedy club in nearby Hermosa Beach), even on top of his hundreds of perform, to please, to leave them cheering. “Tonight Show” appearances. That he accepted one more White House Correspondents’ Association gig is understandable in this light. “I consider it a great honor,” he said. “I love doing it. It’s great fun. You get to meet the president of the United States. I mean, the last time I did it with President Bush, as I walked to the podium, I felt somebody grab my ass, and I look over and I see him going yuk-yuk-yuk, and I go, ‘The president grabbed my ass going up to the podium.’ What’s funnier than that? How often in your life does the president grab your ass as you walk by?”

James Hohmann contributed to this report.

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