And revealed that Madonna totally supports her new single:

The good news is, I got an email from her people sending me their love and support on behalf of the single. And if the queen says it shall be, then it shall be.

The two further talked about the meaning of”Born This Way” which some have billed as a self-conscious anthem for the gay rights movement. Lady Gaga skirted around that point instead talking at length about harnessing “your inner superstars.”

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While the old familiar faces of late night don’t do much more than make us chuckle ourselves to sleep at night, one man has been calmly and quietly upping his game: Jimmy Kimmel. Despite his distance from the action, it was Kimmel who took some of the most direct shots at Leno during the late night wars. In addition to imitating Leno on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and then appearing on Leno’s show and insulting him to his face, Kimmel has been more outspoken than Conan himself about Leno’s sneaky strategy to take back “The Tonight Show” (although Bill Carter’s new book, “The War for Late Night,” seems to suggest that Leno wasn’t quite so calculating as Kimmel and others seem to assume). When asked in an interview with GQ this month what he learned from the late night dust-up, Kimmel replied: “The lesson is, it pays to be sneaky. I think that’s the main thing I learned. That, and don’t trust Jay Leno.”

It’s this frank talk that sets Jimmy Kimmel apart from his peers. Throw in the sharpest and funniest opening monologue on late night, an incredible knack for improv, and liberal use of off-kilter gimmicks and skits, and it’s no wonder that Kimmel has risen to the rank of late night king. Whether he’s launching a multitiered attack on Facebook idiocy with his National Unfriend Day, finding creative new ways to insult Matt Damon, or shooting an entire episode during a power outage using only his webcam, Kimmel has always had that combination of swagger and imagination that separates the good talk show hosts from the great ones. Like Johnny Carson and Letterman in his heyday, Kimmel has the bluster and the quick wit to make every moment watching him on the air feel dynamic and exciting.

That’s no small feat, of course, but it’s what real late night heroism demands. Kimmel tackles pop culture with more sharp wit and weirdo flair than any of the other late night hosts, whether he’s addressing the new Spider-Man musical (“I’ve been working on a superhero show myself, it’s called ‘Aquaman on Ice.’ Aquaman on skates, trying desperately to speak to his friends who are trapped under the layer of ice. That’s a musical!”), rumors that Snoop Dogg will play at Prince William’s bachelor party (“I’m excited for His Highness, and by His Highness, I mean both of them”), airline security pat-downs (“We freak out if a TSA agent touches us on the outside of our pants, but Black Friday, we will hump each other’s heads to get at Walmart to save 8 bucks on a PSP”), or even the plans to have Lindsay Lohan appear on “Dancing With the Stars” (“I would love to see her vomit on Len Goodman”).

When he’s interviewing guests, Kimmel is arguably better on his feet and more ready with unexpected quips than any other host. On a recent episode when Ben Affleck waxed sympathetic about hard economic times in America, Kimmel soon hinted that no one wants to hear a megastar fake emotion for the little people.

Affleck: I don’t think there’s anybody in the United States that hasn’t been affected (by the recession) in some way or another.

Kimmel: Oprah hasn’t been affected at all.

On another recent episode, Kimmel took an otherwise bland interview with Kate Bosworth and livened it up. (And let’s face it, the real test of good late-night hosting lies in finding some way to spice up interviews with dull, self-involved young actors and actresses. In addition to Kimmel, only Letterman and Craig Ferguson manage it with any regularity.)

Bosworth: (on her Korean co-star) He literally is the Brad Pitt of Korea. It’s pretty wild.

Kimmel: Really? ‘Cause I was told I was the Brad Pitt of Korea. That’s disappointing. I feel like I was lied to. (pause) He’s the Brad Pitt of Korea. And so does that mean he adopts a whole bunch of white kids, or how does that work?

He even managed to save an interview with Paris Hilton from the bowels of hell:

Hilton: (on her current boyfriend) Right now, I’m just so happy. He’s my best friend.

Kimmel: Wait a minute, now. I saw a television show in which you picked a best friend and he wasn’t it. Are you telling me that was not your real BFF?

Later, when Hilton called her new perfume “my tenth fragrance,” Kimmel countered, “That seems like too many fragrances to me.”

This is where the fans of Jimmy Fallon, who have been rallying lately to crown their contagiously giddy leader the supreme ruler of late night, really must admit defeat. While Fallon’s antics try our patience in all the right ways (Zach Galifianakis’ recent appearance, followed by a skit the very finest flavor of stupid, marked a recent high point), Fallon is a pretty bland interviewer, sometimes resembling Chris Farley’s guffawing yes-man talk show host of “SNL” legend. Nonetheless, Fallon is undoubtedly in the groove lately, with such sure-footed oddball gimmicks and quirky enthusiasm that it makes you wonder if “The Chris Farley Show” itself wouldn’t have morphed into something deliciously strange, if given enough time. And let’s face it, anyone who makes Helen Mirren play beer pong deserves at least an honorable mention, if not an Emmy.

While he might be the best Neil Young impersonator on late night (or anywhere else), Fallon has none of the subtle snideness that made Carson, Letterman and now Kimmel masters of the craft. Sure, the kind folks down at the local elementary school’s bake sale might find such a tone distasteful, but the rest of us, who’ve been marinating in a toxic mix of “The Love Boat,” People magazine and celebreality shows for years now, need a healthy dollop of scorn to make the celebrity promotional appearance go down a little more smoothly.

Fans of Craig Ferguson will point out that he shares the requisite doubting tone in his interviews, and also scores very high for sheer courage of conviction. And it’s true that to watch half a second of Ferguson’s show is to love him, from his googly-eyed knowing looks to his perverse but genius rambling asides. His self-effacing charms make his perhaps the most unpredictable and unruly of the late night shows. However enchantingly strange Ferguson’s monologues and interviews may be, they just don’t stack up to Kimmel’s.

And like Letterman, Kimmel carries the torch of bemoaning his network overlords, lamenting the dumb stuff ABC makes him promote. The imbedded advertising — Bud Light signs on the stage, Old Navy promotions at the start of the show, constant appearances by “Dancing With the Stars” contestants — isn’t all that easy to ignore, but Kimmel makes the best of it. He’s taken to calling himself “the three-headed dog the stars must pass on their way to no-dancing hell,” and after that show’s big finale, he told his audience, “I tell you something, I had a good morning. I woke up this morning, and for about three minutes, couldn’t remember who won “Dancing With the Stars” this year. It felt great, it really did.”

But Kimmel should wake up feeling great every morning. After all, who would’ve thought that this guy would be the big winner of the late night debacle of 2010? When you flip from Conan to Leno to Letterman, or stay up for Carson Daly or Fallon or Ferguson, even though you might appreciate Ferguson’s bizarro self-deprecating digressions or Fallon’s raw enthusiasm, Kimmel is the only host who will make you laugh out loud more than a few times per episode. He’s got the sharpest monologue, the most interesting digressions and skits, and the best interviewing skills. Now that the dust has cleared, “The Tonight Show” doesn’t look like a prize worth squabbling over, because, with or without the Cheesecake Factory backdrop, Jimmy Kimmel is the new Johnny Carson.

This is hardly a new critique of Romney, but if his latest “Tonight Show” appearance drives one reality home, it’s that watching the former governor run for president will never cease to be a maddening exercise — at least for anyone who knows anything about the leader Romney purported to be back in his Massachusetts days.

For instance, Leno also pointed out that Palin had taken some heat for leaving her job as Alaska’s governor midway through her term. You were a governor too, he pointed out to his guest. Could you ever see yourself skipping out like that?

“No, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances where I’d quit. I loved being governor,” he said, noting that the post allowed him to “improve schools” and “get healthcare for folks.”

“It’s a great job,” he said. “I loved it.”

Funny, that’s not how it seemed for the second half of Romney’s single term in the Massachusetts State House. Like in all non-leap years, there were 365 days in 2006, Romney’s final year in office. He spent 212 of them out of the state, racking up more than 200,000 miles in the air and traveling to nearly 40 other states to lay the groundwork for his 2008 White House campaign. He kept the title of governor, sure, but ask just about anyone in the Bay State and they’ll tell you: He walked out on the job. He quit — just like Palin.

Leno also asked Romney to grade President Obama’s job performance. It doesn’t matter what I think, Romney smoothly replied — it matters what the people think.

“He got his grade in November when they went to the polls and overwhelmingly said that his agenda is not their agenda,” he said.

Funny that Romney should mention humbling midterm elections. He had one of his own back in Massachusetts.

To fully understand the humiliation that the 2004 elections represented for Romney, some background is required. Massachusetts is, obviously, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. When Romney was elected in 2002, only 22 of the 160 seats in the state House of Representatives were held by Republicans. In the Senate, the GOP owned only seven out of 40 seats. This imbalance had much to do with Romney’s victory: He sold himself as a socially moderate good government reformer — a commonsense check on the state government monopoly that Democrats otherwise enjoyed.

In office, Romney dedicated himself to building a viable Republican Party in the state — and to increasing the GOP’s presence on Beacon Hill. He invested and raised $3 million to fund what was the most massive Republican push in decades for the 2004 state legislative elections. A record number of GOP candidates were recruited, trained and funded. They ran as Romney Republicans — reformers equally dedicated to the governor’s Weld-ish mix of cultural moderation and fiscal conservatism. This was supposed to be Romney’s springboard to the national stage: He’d use the momentum from ’04 to advance his agenda and win reelection in 2006, then use that success story to seek the presidency in 2008.

But on Election Day ’04, the unthinkable happened: Somehow, the Republicans lost seats — two in each chamber. “It was,” the Boston Globe wrote, “a stunning defeat for Romney, who personally recruited many of the GOP candidates as he positions himself for a potential White House run.”

That’s about the moment when Romney gave up on Massachusetts. He disengaged as governor, switched his position on abortion, ratcheted up his opposition to gay marriage (which the Massachusetts Supreme Court had just legalized), and ramped up his out of state travel, ridiculing his home state to Republican crowds across the country. Running for reelection in 2006 was out of the question. His polls numbers were dropping (by October ’06, his favorable rating was barely above 30 percent), with voters expressing regret at having elected him in the first place.

In January 2007, two months after his lieutenant governor was throttled in the race to succeed him (the worst showing for a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts in 20 years), Romney officially left office. In reality, though, he’d quit long before then — just as Palin would do in Alaska a few years later. At least she had the decency to be upfront about it.

Leno: Now, why do you find … does the fact that she’s the anti-masturbation candidate –

MacFarlane: I think the second she opened her mouth, it would probably ruin everything.

Leno: Really?

MacFarlane: Yes, yes — once we got into –

Leno: Or make it really good.

In case any of you are slow on the uptake when it comes to dirty humor, that’s an oral sex joke. It’s the sort of zinger I might laugh at if a friend managed it a couple beers into happy hour. Hell, it’s the sort of shamelessly easy and inappropriate comeback that even I might deliver after a couple cold ones. The Name It. Change It. campaign isn’t in the least bit amused: “This type of sexist commentary is extremely damaging to women running for public office and should not — under any circumstances — go unrecognized by the general public,” says the group in a blog post.

I appreciate ribald humor. I’ve also certainly made my share of suggestive and I suppose objectifying comments about, for example, our current vice president (and I am not alone on that front). I’m generally a believer in equal opportunity for sexual objectification or, as I prefer to call it, appreciation. This is undeniably different, though: These men aren’t getting giddy over the sexiness of a female politician that they take seriously. It isn’t an aside in an otherwise respectful conversation. These are two guys using sex to diminish a female politician that they detest. I don’t want to be a prude and I certainly don’t want to be an unsmiling feminist — and I hate to so obviously be on the defensive in that regard — but I’m sick of the hateful, drunk frat-boy humor, especially when it comes to female politicians.