During one of his rare television appearances since stepping down as host of NBC's Tonight Show on February 6, 2014, Jay Leno discussed a wide variety of topics with the host of Late Night With Seth Meyers, including the dramatic rise of political correctness on college campuses.
The topic came up when Meyers congratulated Leno for winning the Mark Twain Award for Humor -- a bronze bust of the 19th-Century novelist, essayist and humorist -- which is presented annually by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing arts “to an individual who has made a significant contribution to American humor.”
Leno thanked his younger counterpart for attending the event, but Meyers noted that Leno “didn't even make a weekend of it in D.C.” because he was elsewhere doing stand-up routines, something the former host is well known for doing often.
“You see, in the real world, people work every day,” Leno joked. “Only in show biz do you go: 'Oh, I've gotta work next Thursday.'”
Meyers responded:
By the way, you worked for an hour.
You're right, Jay. You should have worked harder. You should have done stand-up and gone into a coal mine.
Leno acknowledged that receiving the “Mark Twain thing” is an “incredible honor.” He added that “I was stunned because usually you kinda campaign for things, you know. But that's one of the things where you just get a call one day. 'Oh, cool! Thank you!'”
Meyers then stated: “Of course, you actually have more time now. You're doing colleges as well. That's probably something you did a lot more coming up. Have colleges changed?”
“I'll give you an example,” Leno answered. “We had interns at the show. Like the last year of the show, one of the interns came in and said: “Mr. Leno, I'm getting lunch. What do you want?'”
“I don't know,” Leno responded. “Where are you going?”
“He said: 'We're getting Mexican.'”
“I said: 'I don't really like Mexican.'”
He goes: “Whoa, that's kind of racist.”
“Being anti-guacamole is not racist, okay? You have no idea what racism is,” Leno enthusiastically replied. “That’s not racist, you idiot, you moron!”
Meyers noted: “The hard thing I found when I first started doing this, I felt just like I'm just an old college student. I'm definitely not. The frame of reference is so depressing.”
Leno admitted that he had made a big mistake in a recent conversation. “I was just talking with someone and asked: What do you do, construction, big company, little company?” He then asked: “Like in a Photomat booth?”
The other person replied: “What? What's a Photomat booth?”
“I realize that's like a reference from 25 years ago,” Leno added. “Nobody even here knows what that is.”
“They think it's how Doctor Who travels around,” Meyers replied, referring to a science-fiction program with an alien lead character named the Doctor who travels through space and time in a big blue police box called the TARDIS.
Returning to nostalgia, Leno talked about “my grandfather, who was Italian, he only ate Italian food. And it was always amazing to him when people would eat out of their ethnic groups.
He'd say: “Look at that! A Chinese guy with a hot dog! A black guy with a bagel! A Koren guy with a pizza!” “Grandpa, that's not that big a deal,” Leno responded
“I like that he thought those were the walls we needed to break down,” the host responded.
“And I always liked those sort of reverse, the exact opposite of a college thing,” Leno asserted.
One day, while eating at his favorite restaurant in Chicago, the comedian noticed four men who were “real Italian guys” because they were “sitting on the chair backwards” while arguing about The Sopranos cable television series.
“One of them said: 'You know, The Sopranos was a disgrace! It was a disgrace to the Italian peoples!' He was just going on and on.”
Before long, the man said: “Hey, Leno! You're Italian, right? What did you think of The Sopranos? Was it a disgrace?”
“I tried to be diplomatic” and said: “Well, the show was about a crime family that happened to be Italian.”
“No, not the crime part,” the man responded. “The fact that Tony was a coppo, and they had him seeing a shrink. Don't you think that's a disgrace?”
“So he totally missed the point,” the comedian stated. “So insulting that the head killer would see a shrink.”
Since leaving the Tonight Show after 22 years as host, Leno -- who owns approximately 286 vehicles (169 automobiles and 117 motorcycles) -- also has a website called Jay Leno's Garage, which contains video clips and photos of his automobiles in detail, as well as other vehicles of interest to him.
