The Evil Petting Zoo

You'll have to excuse my brief absence. There's been another academic firestorm.

What makes something funny? According to most people who dissect the essence of a knock-knock jokes for a living, it's the incongruity. It's the element that defies logic, that makes something ridiculous, that makes a joke funny. Freudian analysts split humor into the categories of the ridiculous -- the man acting foolishly in response to events around him -- and the ludicrous -- the man acting composed and slightly snarky as foolish events unspool around him.

Guess what! Apparently, Jay Leno thinks the very act of being gay and in love is ridiculous.

JAY: Can you give me like -- say that camera is your gay lover -- number two --

PHILLIPPE: Wait a second. Wait a second.

JAY: Can you give me your gayest look? Say that -- say that camera is Billy Bob -- Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.

(Your sycophantic audience hoots with laughter at the idea of a strapping lad like Phillippe giving a "gay look.")

PHILLIPPE: Wow. That is so something I don't want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or --

JAY: No, I got more stuff. This is the least of it.

That's all you have to do for humor, according to Jay Leno. You don't have to put the guy making the "gay face" in an incongruous setting, like a battlefield, a slaughterhouse, or the Republican National Convention. Just being gay is an invitation to being someone's fucking clown, 24/7.

That's all we are, to Mr. All Chin No Cock. We are a walking joke. We are not men and women with loves, jobs, and families. We are not a minority who can still be fired just for being themselves without recompense in several states. We are not a group that has been denied the ability to make a bonding legal relationship with those we love in the vast majority of states. We are not a minority that constantly lives in fear that someone will come after one of us "faggots" with a baseball bat just for being who we are.

We are fools. We are the Stepin Fetchit, the Aunt Jemima, the walking, talking punchlines. And I say we show Jay Leno just the same degree of respect.