Let Leno Be Leno

by Michael Sean Winters

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The Catholic League needs to get a sense of humor. They have taken umbrage - which is sort of what the Catholic League does for a living - at a joke by Jay Leno directed at recently retired Los Angeles auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala. And, true to form, the League's President draws some nasty comparisons between Catholics and Jews and gays.

In the event, Leno's joke was not very funny and would have been forgotten had not Bill Donohue seen fit to have a fit. But, this idea that the proper response to satire is to take offense is just bizarre to me and it certainly reinforces an unattractive stereotype of religious figures as stern, unattractive, remote and way too thin-skinned for someone who believes, who really believes, that all Creation will be reconciled to Christ in God's own good time. What's wrong with a joke or two in the meantime?

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