One of late night’s former TV icon, Jay Leno, rebuked the late-night TV echo chamber saying, no one “wants to hear a lecture.” Get the jokes out, not the political message, Leno said.

“It was fun to me when I got hate letters – ‘Dear Mr. Leno, you and your Republican friends’ and ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ – over the same joke,” Jay Leno told Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation CEO David Trulio this week in a video clip posted to Facebook, when asked about studies showing Leno joked about Democrats and Republicans equally in his 22 years on late-night TV.

“And I go, ‘Well, that’s good; that’s how you get a whole audience.'”

Instead, late-night comics hating on President Donald Trump and carrying the water for Democrats are alienating half of America – more than half if you consider Trump’s popular vote victory last November.

“Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion,” Leno said amid the controversy of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” announcing its cancellation next spring, CBS paying out a $16 million settlement to Trump, and the Trump administration’s FCC approving Paramount’s acquisition of CBS.

Leno noted that Trump Derangement Syndrome has changed the face of American politics and comedy, pointing to an example in his longtime friendship with the late Rodney Dangerfield.

“I knew Rodney 40 years,” Leno said. “I have no idea if he was Democrat or Republican. We never discussed; we just discussed jokes.

“And to me, I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be.

“And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”

Laughter can be unifying, but comedy can be divisive, according to Trulio.

“Oh, it’s a great uniter,” Leno joked in a mocking voice. “No, funny is funny.

“It’s funny when someone who’s not” of your politics, Leno continued, “you make fun of their side and they laugh at it, you know.

“I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture.”

Get the jokes out, not the political message, Leno added.

“When I was with Rodney, it was always in the economy of words — get to the joke as quickly as possible,” Leno said.

Late-night comedy shows are struggling throughout the market, and Leno suggested it might be a backlash to alienating half of America – or more in the case of Trump – ostensibly using the James Carville political phrase on the economy, saying “it’s the comedy, stupid.”

“Well, why shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole audience,” Leno said.

“I mean, I like to bring people into the big picture. I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don’t do it at all.

“I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.”

Eric Mack ✉

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

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