Jay Leno has issued an official apology in an attempt to come clean about his longstanding history on taking cheap shots at the Asian community.
Leno’s racist jokes have quite obviously been played on the concept of stereotyping and Leno even made racist Asian jokes as recent as last year, where he reportedly joked about Koreans eating dog meat.
According to Variety, the late-night host and comedian’s apology has been issued after the activist group known as, Media Action Network for Asian Americans’ (MANAA) consistent lobbying.
Leno’s apology didn’t exactly come as a result of taking his own initiative as Consequence of Sound report, but rather as a result of constant campaigning from MANAA, which is why the comedian’s apology has come in the form of a joint press release with MANAA’s leader, Guy Aoki.
He started off by saying, “At the time I did those jokes, I genuinely thought them to be harmless. I was making fun of our enemy North Korea, and like most jokes, there was a ring of truth to them.”
He continued, “At the time, there was a prevailing attitude that some group is always complaining about something, so don’t worry about it. Whenever we received a complaint, there would be two sides to the discussion: Either ‘We need to deal with this’ or ‘Screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke.’ Too many times I sided with the latter even when in my heart I knew it was wrong.”
“I am issuing this apology. I do not consider this particular case to be another example of cancel culture but a legitimate wrong that was done on my part. MANAA has been very gracious in accepting my apology. I hope that the Asian American community will be able to accept it as well, and I hope I can live up to their expectations in the future.”
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