Here's the first part of a story I just read online…
Late-night host and comedian Jay Leno has issued an apology for a series of jokes told over his career targeting Asian communities. The apology comes after a nearly 15-year campaign from the activist group Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) for remarks as recent as Variety's 2020 report that Leno cracked about Koreans eating dog meat — a complaint that offended numerous players on the set of NBC's America's Got Talent.
I suspect some will be citing this as an example of comedy being damaged by "political correctness" and/or Leno lacking guts. If there's going to be a discussion about this, it oughta include a couple of other considerations, starting with the recognition that not everything that was ever funny is funny forever. We can all cite past comedy about various racial groups that no one would do today.
They might not do it because it's in poor taste or they might not do it because audiences don't laugh at it…or both might be true. I'm curious as to whether Jay has been getting decent reactions to jokes about Koreans eating dogs lately. I know he dropped a lot of material because he thought he was too old for "flirty" kinds of jokes and too wealthy for jokes about eating at McDonald's. A lot of long-time comedians could stand to prune some of their older, outta-date ideas about what's funny.
A friend of mine saw one of the last live appearances that Don Rickles did. I asked how he was and my friend said, "Great…if you could pretend it was 1969." No one probably expected Rickles to change his act at the age of 87, nor would most of them have wanted him to…but he wasn't a topical comic. Leno is and he's also not in his eighties. One of the reasons George Carlin remained at the top of his game until he died was that he dumped bits like the one about the Indian Staff Sergeant. Seems to me this is the same thing.