“Jay Leno is a repeat offender in denigrating a part of our Asian American community"
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.”