I didn't think Jay Leno did so well at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night. Granted, it's a tough room. Granted, the audio-video limitations of the place make it awkward to show a lot of clips of prepared comedy bits…which is why one probably shouldn't. And granted, President Obama, who spoke before him, had already touched on many of the same topics. But Leno seemed unprepared with his own material, reading it slavishly off cards, and most of it wasn't that strong to begin with. No comedian really does well with that crowd but Jay's performance wasn't up to the standard of a guy with his credentials.
I wish someone would tell him he could, you know, maybe slow down and say no to some things. He did The Tonight Show on Friday, then flew to Washington to appear at that dinner last night. Tomorrow night, he's at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach out here and then Monday, there's a new Tonight Show. He maintained that kind of pace when he was younger and basically doing the same act wherever he went. Now, he's older and playing more important venues and there's new, untested material almost every day and…well, it's really getting sloppy around the edges. When he was at his best, he was terrific.
You can view Leno's routine — it runs about 21 minutes — over here on the C-Span website. He comes across a little better in the web version than he did on my TiVo where the audience seemed more muted. You might also want to catch President Obama's speech (about 18 minutes) over on this page. He got a lot of the laughs that Leno didn't.
Tonight, Conan O'Brien is on 60 Minutes to give "his side" of what went on with all that late night mess. I don't believe him when he says that he wouldn't have done what Leno did, taking The Tonight Show back. Or at least I don't believe NBC would have let O'Brien keep it much longer if Jay had said he wasn't returning to it.