This column isn’t always going to be about late night, but it’s just been too good over the past couple of weeks to ignore. However, with tonight being Conan‘s last night as host of The Tonight Show, on top of the horrifying news that Jay Leno is hosting the White House Correspondents’ dinner, I feel as though taking a look back on the way Leno and NBC have been slammed this week is only appropriate.
On Wednesday night, David Letterman started off easily enough, making a crack about how Jay Leno was probably going to end up with Ted Kennedy’s congressional seat in Massachusetts, and ending with the NBC peacock walking into a KFC and turning itself in. However, it was the middle, when Letterman said that Al- Jazeera was more trustworthy than NBC, that the claws started to come out.
I love crotchety old Dave Letterman, so to see the childlike glee with which he’s eviscerating Leno in a very subtle, yet cutting way just warms the cockles of my cold dead heart. I love how he starts out with, “Lord knows, I’ve got my own problems,” before going on to say just how much he’s enjoying himself in this whole mess. You know when he talks about “vintage Jay,” he’s not exactly paying him a compliment. It’s been readily apparent, in fact, that Letterman has used this opportunity to exorcise some of the bitterness he still has about losing The Tonight Show to Jay back in ’92. Here’s my favorite part:
“So I’m begging you, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of everyone involved: please, don’t blame Conan… I know that a lot of you think that Conan pushed himself out of a job; he’s not that kind of a guy. He would never do that to himself.” He never says that we should blame Jay, but the implication is pretty clear. He ends with advice to Leno: “You get fired, you get another gig! You don’t wait around for somebody to drop dead!”
So while Letterman is railing against Leno for going back on his word to retire, and basically hanging out in the lobby of NBC, waiting for Conan to fail, Leno, “the nicest guy on TV” goes below the belt. It’s not so much that I think that he shouldn’t go below the belt, or that Letterman’s affairs aren’t fair game when it comes to comedy, it’s just that this is so painfully unfunny. One of my favorite lines from Glee is about how Rachel manages to simultaneously dress like a toddler and a grandmother. That’s what Leno is to me: simultaneously childish and befuddlingly old. But most importantly, NOT FUCKING FUNNY.
This is my thing with Jay Leno: wouldn’t it be shockingly easy for Conan to take Adam Sandler’s place in this clip, and for “Eric” to be replaced with “Leno?”
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Jan 22, 2010 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
I love that Leno clip! He is making an old joke about David Letterman when Jay himself is an old man! The only difference is David get’s some action!
That’s not the only difference. The biggest difference is Dave’s actually funny.
Jay is funny… funny to look at!
Hey look everyone, I made a Jay Leno like joke! Now I just need to add something Clinton to it and it would be perfect.
As much as I love Conan’s righteous insanity this week, Dave’s calm, statesman-like desk chats are the most devastatingly effective because they cut right to the truth of the matter.
Though he’s not as funny personally, I have to link to Jimmy Kimmel’s The Late Night War, a Ken Burns Documentary, which is the flat-out greatest skit I have seen arise from the whole mess. If that video is removed, it’s also available at abc.com.
I used to (lovingly) call David Letterman “the crankiest guy on TV,” and even though that’s still true, now he’s becoming a little Mark Twain-ish: equal parts wise and wiseass. Jay Leno is SOOOO boringly old-school (and this comment comes from a 58-year-old woman) – WTF is NBC thinking?!? Oh, and I work for an NBC affiliate, so I’m basically biting the hand that feeds me.
Thank you for posting these clips, Kona, because I was fast asleep and missed them.
I think we should focus on the fact that Conan played “Freebird” at the end of his last show.
That song is the hardest one on “Guitar Hero”. On top of being a “magnificent nerd” I’ll have to admit I’d never expect him to be such a good guitar player. I marvel at the guy.