Hillary Clinton as Godzilla destroying the real Japanese island of Obama.
It is awards season, and some of us find ourselves at red carpet’s edge, making with the TV alongside a flock of reporters.
Some of you might be thinking that this is a position to be envied: please allow me to disabuse you of that thought. Not only do you literally have to dress for the party but don’t get to go in, you have to cool your heels with the other stage-door Johnnies, and they all hate you.
They don’t hate each other, they hate you. You, with the Tonight Show job. You, with the Tonight Show microphone that attracts so many stars, so easily. You, with no journalistic standard to uphold.
That’s right, I have my ENG crew (short for Electronic News Gathering), I have my on-air talent, I have all the trappings of a news report, I even have a press pass. I just never took that Hippocratic Oath or whatever it is that journalists do when they get sworn in. I have all the freedom in the world to rearrange soundbites so they’re funny, or do a half-dozen takes until the talent gets it right, or turn Hillary Clinton into Godzilla, as seen above.
These poor guys have to actually be reporters.
And they get really upset about it, too. I was once shoved to the ground at a Lenox Lewis press conference in Memphis by an ABC News producer, because Lewis broke off an interview when he saw I had Dave Chappelle with me. At the Olympics in Salt Lake City, a German reporter ratted us out for having four guys in the press line, when only three were allowed (there were only the two crews at the venue: there was room for 125 total crews). And an ESPN reporter smacked me on the side of the head to get me out of the way at the baseball All-Stars game last year, to clear the way for his crew to shoot our Cookie Lady talking with Barry Bonds.
But then I look at the monologue and I realize that, in many ways, the Tonight Show has a higher journalistic standard than most. The depressing fact that one third of our viewers get their news from the monologue is made slightly better by the notion that, until you get to the punchline, the facts are facts.
If a story sounds preposterous, Jay calls you on it. You have to give a source. There’s no distorting the story to make the premise work better. And the reason is simple: it’s always funnier because it’s true.
So the next time you read a half-page of corrections in the (now, sadly, wafer-thin) Los Angeles Times, the next time you see a story reported on Headline News from an earlier breaking story on Fox taken from an on-the-scene spot by a local affiliate, don’t despair. If it’s a big enough story, just wait until 11:35, 10:35 Central, and turn on the Leno Show. Chances are, if it’s in the monologue, we got it right.
And God willing, it’s funny too.
As a writing teacher I know always says, “You can’t make that shit up.”