No. Watching Leno's affable but clumsy maneuvers on "The Tonight Show" was always a little bit like watching your dad show off to your friends. He might be big and lovable, but he's also cringe-inducingly buffoonish, leaden and out of touch. In fact, this approachable, dumb-dad shtick may hold the key to Leno's appeal: He offered America an amiable late-night father figure, happy to tuck us into bed in the most tender, non-threatening way possible. After all, who wants a tender nighty-night kiss from jittery, jumpy Conan, or that snickering weasel Letterman?

But should Americans' longing for more attention from their emotionally distant fathers keep us mired in this mediocrity indefinitely? Because, let's face it, relying on Leno to introduce you to what's current in the entertainment and music world is like asking your dog about the Internet. It's not just unhelpful, it's downright uncomfortable.

But let's cast all of these doubts aside for once. Let's suspend our disbelief and tell ourselves that "The Jay Leno Show" (premieres at 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 14) might wind up pleasantly surprising us with its hilarity and originality. Let's pretend, for the moment, that Leno might thrive in a brand-new weeknightly (Lord help us!) format, and let's not limit our predictions of the show's quality to the range between A Huge Disappointment and A Big, Unfathomable, Endlessly Repeating Mistake.

Let's hope for the best from Jay Leno, shall we? I mean, just because allowing a largely talentless man to fill Johnny Carson's shoes was enough of a blunder to begin with, just because NBC has added insult to injury by handing over a vast amount of TV real estate for Leno to squander once more, just because there are plenty of funny, quick-witted oddballs out there who've spent their entire lives dreaming of (and practicing for) a chance to prove their mettle in the talk-show circuit, only to be trounced time and again in favor of colorless but safe faces like Leno, that doesn't mean we have to approach Monday night's premiere with skepticism and a mean-spirited wish for Leno to fail.

Instead, let's watch Leno all week and collect his very best moments and best jokes, and we'll recap the highlights a week from now. Let's give Leno a solid, fighting chance to impress us for the first time ever. Let's open our minds and our hearts and embrace this man for exactly who he is.

Who is he again? Well, maybe, with an open mind, we'll find out.

Send your favorite jokes, favorite bad jokes, gimmicks and moments from the first week of "The Jay Leno Show" to jaylenojokes@gmail.com. 

At this week's Upfronts, in which the five networks present their fall lineups to advertisers, network executives revealed very different approaches to these challenging cultural and economic times for televised entertainments. Some networks reinvented themselves, others  sent out pot-smoke signals from the confines of their forts. Some networks meditated and consulted their gurus, while others got fall-down drunk on 40-ouncers of malt liquor and wandered off to sleep in the gutter.

Which approach would bring audiences back? Would bold, courageous (but risky) moves win us over, or would conservative, repetitive (and arguably safer) maneuvers attract more viewers? As usual, we won't know until the fall season (see also: until it's way too late to correct course), but that won't stop us from analyzing (see also: second-guessing) each network's strategy from the comfort of our own couch-cushion forts.

(Could you slide that grilled cheese sandwich in the crack there? Yes, I want to eat in the dark. No, that's all I need. Thank you.)

 Uppity front

What's fascinating about this year's Upfronts is that, instead of offering a generous range of brand-new shows from each genre like they usually do, most of the networks are producing just a handful of new series and holding onto critically acclaimed ones that are nonetheless struggling in the ratings.  Unheard of, but somehow refreshing!

Let's start with schizophrenic NBC, the network that, on the one hand, has great taste ("30 Rock," "The Office") and can afford to stick by its past decisions but that also refuses to play by the rules, from announcing a few major decisions weeks before the Upfronts to arbitrarily deciding that Jay Leno should rule the known universe.

This year, NBC made some bold moves by keeping a few good but ratings-poor shows that it believed in ("Friday Night Lights," "Southland," “Parks and Recreation") while ditching some longtime favorites with better ratings ("My Name Is Earl," "Medium"). "Earl" creator Greg Garcia bitterly likened getting dumped to "being thrown off the Titanic," but expressed hopes that Fox might pick them up. Meanwhile, CBS is picking up "Medium," which is, for NBC, sort of like dumping your wife, only to have her move in with the (richer, older) guy next door.

Personally, except for the death of "Kings" (the airing of which was a bold move in the first place), I like NBC's choices, ratings be damned. What I do find unnerving is that NBC still plans to roll out "The Jay Leno Show" five nights a week at 10 p.m., which is a little bit like polishing off a 2-liter bottle of Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull that you know you hate in the first place, then vomiting all over your brand-new shoes. Isn't it odd that the network with the most charming, funniest comedy on TV ("30 Rock") would give five hours of prime-time real estate to the least charming, least funny man on TV (Jay Leno)?

 ABC, on the other hand, is taking the extreme makeover route. They're canceling "Samantha Who?" and "The Unusuals" while throwing money behind a slate of 11 new shows, seven to air in the fall. My favorite? A reinvention of the 1983 miniseries "V" (Remember the alien baby bursting out of the woman's stomach?) in which aliens invade the world and their initially friendly intentions are eventually revealed to be nefarious. Now, admittedly, pretty much anything apocalyptic gets my vote, at least at the outset: "Invasion," "Jericho," "Heroes," "24.” As long as the general populace is threatened, panicking and/or hiding out in bunkers, I'm on board. That said, the clips for this one look awesome: Aliens arrive, but they're totally friendly and cooperative! The world rejoices! Then, just as a journalist (played by Scott Wolf from "Party of Five") is about to interview a friendly alien in human form, she menacingly (but politely) instructs, "Just remember not to ask me anything that might portray us in a negative light." Ominous, but subtle. This is the kind of cheese that I eat until I'm sick.

Other notable new ABC shows are "Shark Tank" (Mark Burnett-produced show with competing entrepreneurs), "Eastwick" (dramedy based on John Updike novel and movie "Witches of Eastwick"), "Flash Forward" (worldwide blackout gives people a glimpse of the future), "Cougar Town" (dramedy with Courtney Cox as divorced single mother) and "Hank" (comedy with Kelsey Grammar as executive who loses his job).

The question is, will ABC's new regimen of diet, exercise and meditation work, or will it just become a neurotic, controlling version of its former frumpy self? Throwing a bunch of different shows at the wall to see what sticks seems like as good a call as any, but having watched some clips online (you can see a few of them here), most of these shows seem to suffer from ABC's tendency to take vaguely interesting or dark concepts and render them chirpy and toothless -- think "Lipstick Jungle," "Brothers & Sisters," "Private Practice." Everyone smiles and acts adorable; harmless, button-nosed women are cast in every role; sharp lines have no edge because the actors and the direction are tone-deaf. From what I've seen, "V" doesn't seem to suffer from this curse, but at first glance "Eastwick" and "Cougar Town" look like otherwise decent concepts transformed into the same old bland, girly fluff.

 But don't take it from me, take it from Jimmy Kimmel who, as part of ABC's Upfront presentation last Tuesday, informed advertisers, "Let's get real here. These new fall shows? We're going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more." Kimmel continued, "Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more. You don't need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies on to your clients." Hmm. Now there's a new approach: total honesty. In the advertising world, that's sort of like buying a very expensive Winchester revolver, pointing it at your own head, and pulling the trigger.

But then, when you're (sort of, almost) winning, you take a very different tone. At the start of CBS's Upfront presentation, Les Moonves reminded reporters, "We are the only network that is up a single demographic. Nobody else is up in anything." With that, CBS promptly unveiled the repetitive, scaredy-cat tactics that got them there: Procedurals, procedurals, a few sitcoms, a new hospital drama and even more procedurals. There's "NCIS," "NCIS: Los Angeles" (a new spinoff), "Criminal Minds," "Numb3ers," "CSI," "CSI: NY," "The Mentalist," "The Ghost Whisperer," and, since that's really not nearly enough procedurals, "Medium." But don't forget, there's also some brand-new stuff! A new drama called "The Good Wife," about the wife of a fallen politician, starring Julianna Margulies (her again?), a new sitcom, "Accidentally on Purpose," starring former "Dharma & Greg" star Jenna Elfman (her again?) and "Three Rivers," a drama about organ transplants.

 In short, CBS, the Stuart Smalley of TV networks, has decided that CBS is awesome and CBS doesn't need to change a thing about CBS. CBS should consider taking a hint from the competitors on its own long-running show, "Survivor": The second you start feeling safe (Hello, Tyson! Hello, Taj!), that's when the ax is about to fall.

Thankfully, Fox is still taking healthy hits off the bong (as usual), but instead of crouching in the couch fort, they're blowing smoke all over the other networks' faces. Fox execs have decided to stick behind Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" (great move!), along with its new hits "Lie to Me" and "Fringe."

They also added the new comedy "Glee" (another great move) and the longtime summer show "So You Think You Can Dance" to their fall lineup on the same night. Since last fall there was a serious dearth of good new comedies and fun reality programming, and both "Glee" and "SYTYCD" fit the bill, it's hard to see where this strategy fails. As loath as I am to admit it, lately Fox has been making pretty good decisions, as evidenced most dramatically by the very existence of "Dollhouse" and "Glee." Keep hitting that bong, friends!  It's working.

The hour that felt like a decade

But speaking of Fox and hitting the funny pipe, did anyone catch the two-hour finale of "24," and if so, did anyone stay awake through the second hour?

Yes, clearly "24" jumped the shark a long time ago, but who knew it would stand around for so long afterward, having slow-moving, weighty conversations about how frightening and awful it was to jump the shark ... but really, it had no choice, can't you see that?

So much wasted potential! Tuesday's finale could've been explosive, or at least vaguely distracting: Jack Bauer was dying, Kim Bauer was about to be held hostage (an old "24" standby), Tony Almeida had a master plan that (of course) involved avenging Michelle's death so many millions of moons ago. And the president's daughter was about to be sent to her room without supper for having terrorist mastermind Jonas Hodges killed on the sneak!

But instead of car chases and coughed up lungs and panic in the streets and lots of big, loud explosions, all we got was weak, grumbly Tony, revealing his secret plan, then crying his eyes out over stupid Michelle. "Grow up, Tony," we wanted to say. "Take a shower, shave, have a hot meal, and you'll see that things aren't nearly as bad as you make them out to be."

Instead, Tony was dragged off screaming in high "Scooby Doo" style. OK, sure, it was cool when Jack was about to get his organs harvested and then repurposed as biological weapons. But they could've at least cut him up a little, instead of just jabbing him with a needle. And wasn't it interesting how they paralyzed him, and after laying still for a minute, eyes bulging, he writhed and screamed in agony, then killed a whole roomful of able-bodied men with his bare hands? Did someone replace the paralysis-inducing serum they usually serve with superpowered assassin serum?

And what next? A hijacked plane? An exploding van? No, Jack and the redheaded babe agent had a long talk and exchanged a warm embrace (yawn) and Jack and Kim had a weighty heart-to-heart and made up (snore). Sweet Jesus, could "24" really be ending with a series of interminable, sniffly confessions? What is this, "The Tyra Banks Show"?

Worst of all, the (stupidest) president (ever) acted mildly disappointed in her felon of a daughter and then, instead of dying of guilt on the spot for making the petulant brat her chief of staff in the first place, she turned the pouting ingrate over to the authorities while her (vaguely pathetic) first husband looked on disapprovingly. That's all we get? And meanwhile, how completely frowned upon would it be for a secret service agent to leak news of administrative malfeasance outside the White House? Aaron Pierce would've shown up in Rock Creek Park with a bullet in his frontal lobe.

It was sad to see "24" stoop so low, after we waited so very long for its triumphant return. Why did the producers of "24" respond to a long hiatus by killing its golden goose, then grinding it up to make gooseburgers?

But this is what happens in times of great stress. Some people respond to a divorce by adopting a second child, some handle a personal budget crisis by redecorating the bathroom, and some greet the Second Coming of Our Lord in Gay Sheep's Clothing (Adam Lambert) by voting for the nice little hetero Disney prince instead, thereby insuring the survival of strummy, wussy GooGoo Dolls music to play during "Grey's Anatomy" montages.

And speaking of "Grey's," apparently some people respond to a foot-stomping diva on their cast (Katherine Heigl) by killing her off (Oh please, please!) and maybe even killing off her pouty sidekick (T.R. Knight) while they're at it. Sweet lord, bestow your tender mercies upon us all and knock them both off the planet with one fell swoop!

From the financial crisis to the specter of a global pandemic to the threat of even more neutered acoustic strumming, we all have to decide on our own response: Reinvent, redress, reinvest, reheat or return to bed?

I think you know my approach. Nighty night! 

"It was like Special Olympics, or something," Obama quipped in response.

Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton offered something of an apology almost immediately, telling reporters aboard Air Force One, "The President made an offhand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics. He thinks that the Special Olympics are a wonderful program that gives an opportunity to shine to people with disabilities from around the world." And Obama called Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver -- Sen. Ted Kennedy's nephew -- to offer a personal apology that Shriver described as "very moving."

It was a lame joke, a failed attempt at humor, but probably not the kind of thing that deserves to be part of the usual cycle of outrage that occurs when these sorts of things happen. Fortunately, for the most part, people -- even on the right side of the blogosphere --  have been keeping it in at least some kind of perspective.

Still, the reaction has been filled with the kind of argument that's one of my biggest pet peeves in political discussion: The "Imagine the reaction if he was a Republican/Democrat" argument. (See, in this case, The Anchoress and Kathryn Jean Lopez, for instance.)

It's just a silly point to make, one based entirely in the fact that the person making it has no actual evidence for their claim. And inevitably it asssumes the worst -- if President Bush had made that joke, there'd be rioting in the streets! The media would be demanding impeachment!

Well, no, sorry. Typically there really is no double standard on these sorts of things. It's not perfectly analogous, but remember that in 2006 Bush inadvertently teased a legally blind reporter for wearing sunglasses intended to help preserve his remaining vision. The world didn't end. And just last year, Vice President Dick Cheney made a joke about inbreeding in West Virginia. (Again, not strictly analogous, but keep in mind why inbreeding is taboo in the first place.) It was such a non-story that I, frankly, didn't even remember it happening until I stumbled upon it while looking for a link about the joke Bush made -- and I didn't write about it at the time it occurred, either.

Speaking of pet peeves, writing about the joke over at Newsbusters, the blog of the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog, Noel Sheppard made a similar kind of argument, one that also drives me crazy when I see it.

"Will media pay much attention to this potentially offensive slight to the handicapped?" Sheppard asked, which would be a fair question, I suppose, were it not for the way he began the next line of his post: "According to ABC's Jake Tapper..."

I think that answers the question, no?

The funny bone, in most cases, is no match for the pointy head. Peterson's head, though, is something a good deal more: zesty and contentious and sophisticated -- and capable even of coughing up a good line or two on its own. An American studies professor at the University of Iowa, Peterson is a former stand-up comic and political cartoonist who wants to know how we're changed by the act of laughing. Not just any laughing, either, but the kind that happens late in the evening, when the Lenos and Lettermans and Stewarts and Colberts are making merry with the day's carnage.

The combined ratings of all their programs may be less than Johnny Carson in his heyday, but late-night TV matters now as never before. For all its parodic inflections, it has become one of the main news sources for Americans, particularly young Americans, and politicians of every stripe happily perch themselves in whatever dunking booth they can find for the chance of an uninterrupted 10 minutes with the 18-to-29 demographic.

Four years ago, John Kerry was so eager to ride his Harley onto "The Tonight Show" stage that he agreed to follow Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Arnold Schwarzenegger used the same forum to launch his 2003 gubernatorial bid. John McCain announced his most recent candidacy on "Letterman," and with every change of season comes Hillary Clinton, brandishing a new Top 10 list. These appearances tend to follow the same arc of humiliation. Candidate takes good-natured ribbing from host; host claps candidate on shoulder, ushers him or her offstage ... and then carries on joking about candidate as if person had never been there. Ain't America great?

Well, on that last question, Peterson is suggestively mum, but he's quite voluble on another subject: the jokes themselves. "In spite of the fact that comedy about politics is now as common as crabgrass, political comedy -- that is, genuine satire, which uses comedic means to advance a serious critique -- is so rare we might be tempted to conclude it is extinct."

Go ahead. Think back on the monologue you heard the other night on TV. Chances are good that, whether it was delivered by Jay or Dave or Conan O'Brien, it was nothing more than a theme-and-variations spin on the same old equations: Bush = dumb; Clinton = cold; McCain = old. Oh, boy, is he old! His Secret Service name is "Enlarged Prostate," and the two State Department employees who were looking into Barack Obama's passport file were also inspecting McCain's Civil War records, and John McCain is so old he remembers when Iraq was called Mesopotamia, and hey, have we cracked a Monica Lewinsky joke lately? No?

"Topical comedians," says Peterson, "keep finding new ways to tell us what we already 'know' about politicians." And because they harp so remorselessly on candidates' individual quirks -- ignoring the hard, complex, often maddening substance of policy -- they declare, in effect, that every choice is equally bad and that the system itself is "an irredeemable sham." "Election after election," Peterson writes, "night after night, joke after joke, they have reinforced the notion that political participation is pointless, parties and candidates are interchangeable, and democracy is futile."

There are good and sound economic reasons for this, of course. Someone as focused on numbers as Jay Leno is not about to sacrifice half his viewers for the sake of bringing down George W. Bush's immigration policy. Johnny Carson never even mentioned the Vietnam War. True satire can take root only in the exurbs of cable, where comic pioneers smoke out the vipers in democracy's den. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert -- in Peterson's cosmology, these are the true heroes of late-night, because they ground even their harshest commentary in "a faith in the political process." And on that score, nobody has ascended higher than the "Lincolnish" Colbert, whose Gettysburg Address coincided with the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a normally inane and self-congratulatory affair prodded into fretful life by Colbert's assault. Afterward, the dragoons of the press corps (Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Cohen) fell over themselves declaring that Colbert had bombed. In fact, he'd been throwing bombs. Right into their laps.

"Here's how it works," Colbert explained. "The president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction!"

Colbert's address perfectly meets Peterson's criteria for genuine satire: It causes its targets either to take umbrage or to "adopt a studied silence." Pseudo satire, by contrast, is often embraced and even co-opted by its purported victims. Think of Bush père inviting Dana Carvey to the White House, Janet Reno bopping around with Will Ferrell, Al Gore competing with David Letterman to tell the best Al Gore joke. The lampooned pol can safely join in the bloodletting because no blood is actually being let. "Real satire," growls Peterson, "means it."

So, under all this funny and not-so-funny business, a decidedly moral argument is being advanced. And yet I would argue that personality and aesthetics enter into it, too. Dennis Miller meets at least some of the criteria of true satire: real, albeit retrograde, convictions declaimed without fear of offending. Peterson slams him for being too beholden to GOP talking points, but it really boils down to this: He doesn't like the guy. "Like Holden Caulfield, [Miller] is not as smart as he thinks he is, but is too full of himself to notice."

No one, though, comes in for quite as much scorn as the glad-handing Leno: "more of a salesman than an artiste ... less like a political joker than a politician in his own right ... willing to stoop to almost anything." If you've ever wondered why Leno's production company is called Big Dog, Peterson says, just watch him bounding onstage every night. "If he had a tail, it would be wagging."

This is spot on, and part of the fun of "Strange Bedfellows" is matching up your own likes and dislikes with the author's. For my part, I think he undervalues Conan O'Brien, and I'm not sure why he feels the need to pound on performers like Sasha Baron Cohen, who have only a tenuous relation to the late-night world. Shock comedy, in general, brings out a latent strain of sniffiness in Peterson. Sarah Silverman, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, "Family Guy," even "Married ... With Children" are all lumped into the same unsavory stew of poo-poo jokes and mindless iconoclasm. "A society that has no taboos left offers nothing for humor to challenge," thunders Peterson. "If nothing is sacred, nothing is at stake." I would guess Lenny Bruce, back in his day, was whacked with that same dead fish.

As the late-night landscape continues to evolve, Peterson may well have cause to return to the subject, and if he does, I hope he'll explore the tension that lies at the heart of his thesis. By his own reckoning, the democratically chosen entertainments of the masses are also democracy's enemy, and the only ones who can save us from ourselves are a small and brainy elite that in fact looks less and less like modern America. It's a strange irony that late-night comedy, at least since Dave Chappelle's abdication, has become one of the most lily-white enclaves in TV. Are we still looking to white men to save the day? Is the rest of America, in Peterson's estimation, just too dumb to be trusted with democracy?