Leno and his "dumb thing to say"

Jay Leno admits that his comment to Ryan Phillipe was "wrong" and a "dumb thing to say." I'm not sure what else he said because the press is happy enough with those snippets. I'm not happy with them. Neither was Ryan Phillipe, who let it be known, on the spot, that he did not think the comment from Leno was funny.

He's a funny guy, right? His job is to tell jokes. His friend and announcer John Melendez swears by Leno's goodness and that the fault is with the people who can't just laugh with Jay--because he's a funny guy. Melendez, who writes and acts for the show One, Two, Many (a man trying to get the girl of his dreams), thinks that "in this day and age, everyone is so PC." Apparently, Melendez and Leno are saving us from the horrors of being politically correct with their use of heterosexist and sexist jokes.

PC. It's a funny little acronym that people throw around, usually when they or people they relate to say something really stupid and mean and they don't want to be criticized for it. "I'm practicing my freedom of speech, and you're just being PC."

Here's my problem. PC is not the point. I bet Phillipe did not have his reaction and response because he was worried about being PC. In schools, educators don't reprimand students for saying, "that's so gay" because we want them to be politically correct.

PC is not the liberal mantra, Melendez (and whoever else). In fact, the whole idea of PC is for people who want to blab without thinking and think without thinking. It's for people to excuse themselves for being undeservedly superior and taking and using that superiority to keep other people down. To claim something is PC is to legitimize language and actions that have been quantitatively and qualitatively proven to hurt all people involved and even those down the road.

Maybe I'm more furious with Melendez and his attempt to clasp to his "right" to bash people than I am mad at Leno. I'm disappointed with Leno for not going a bit deeper with his apology and taking some further action with himself and with his environment. If things like that fall out of his mouth on accident and he truly thinks it was a wrong thing to say, then he needs to do some serious inventory of his thinking and his beliefs. Then, he needs to take some action, like telling Melendez to shut his trap and that he was wrong because such language puts down a whole group of people and further legitimizes homophobia in our country. He needs to do this for his own karma and for the people out there who think he's funny and who listen to him without questioning, "Wow... That is so something I don't want to do."