Washington Examiner reports that Asian American groups are calling for NBC to cut ties with Jay Leno for his joke about eating dogs.
Last month now-former America’s Got Talent judge Gabrielle Union outed Leno for saying racist remarks whilst he was a guest host on the show.
Commenting on a painting of executive producer Simon Cowell and his dogs, Leno said it looked like something one might see “on the menu at a Korean restaurant.”
Union, who was introduced in AGT’s 14th season, urged producers to report the joke to NBC’s human resources. She was instead axed from the show.
NBC – the network behind Leno’s The Jay Leno Show – is now receiving pressure from Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the Media Action Network to fire Leno.
“Jay Leno is a repeat offender in denigrating a part of our Asian American community and it must stop,” John C. Yang, president and executive director of Advancing Justice, said in a statement.
Yang highlighted that the AGT incident was not Leno’s first offence, describing using a pattern of Asian stereotypes in his comedy – “whether it is his use of this offensive stereotype to talk about a Korean skater’s Olympic loss in 2002 — ’Kim Dong-sung was so upset, he went home, kicked his dog, then ate him!’ — or his apparent recent comment backstage at ‘America’s Got Talent’ where he remarked that pets in a photo looked like something one would find ‘on the menu at a Korean restaurant.’”
MANAA’s founding president Guy Aoki said that Leno has a “bizarre fixation with Asians eating dogs.” Aoki called for CNBC to drop Jay Leno’s Garage.
“It took two conference calls, countless meetings with NBC executives, even admonishment from a high ranking NBC executive and two advertiser campaigns to get Jay Leno to stop after 10 years,” Aoki said in a statement.
“Given that after all this time, Leno has been an unrepentant repeat offender … MANAA is asking NBC to end its business relationship with him.”
