Back to Home > Tuesday, Mar 14, 2006 News email this print this '); '); } Wendy Brogin co... JAY LENO CALLS WITH AN APOLOGY...

It's one heard in millions of American living rooms most nights. With its broad New England roots and California polish, it has chatted up celebrities and politicians. The voice that regularly picks on Kevin Eubanks also cracked wry about the shooting of Brogin's good friend, offending her.

The ''Tonight Show'' host had aired a sketch several days earlier likening Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a friend to the 2003 videotaped rampage by a gunman outside the Van Nuys Courthouse. The latter incident sent Brogin's friend, Canoga Park attorney Gerald Curry, to the hospital, and she found Leno's jokes tasteless.

So she sent him a letter on a Thursday, told him she was aghast and asked him to ''do the right thing relative to this matter.'' By Monday, her phone was ringing, with Leno on the line. He offered his regrets, she thanked him and called him a mensch and a model for the entire community.

Leno, despite repeated requests, declined through a spokeswoman to comment about the exchange, saying it was not done to curry public favor. This marks the second time in recent months that he's made semi-public amends with viewers who've taken umbrage at his commentary, calling Thomas B. Mudd of Saginaw, Mich., after making a mistake in January in a comment about Mudd's great-grandfather.

Of the talk show hosts, Leno has always played the role of the nice guy. David Letterman is the grouch, Jon Stewart the cynic, Conan O'Brien the whacked-out jokester. But Leno generally plays it safe and doesn't rough anyone up too badly, save his beleaguered band members.

That wouldn't be hard to see from Leno's charitable bona fides, with his participation in Love Rides to raise money for muscular dystrophy research and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he raised for tsunami and terror victims.

But come on, chuckled Tim Delaney, an assistant professor of sociology at State University of New York, Oswego. This is comedy -- there's no code of ethics saying you've got to be nice or even accurate.

''He basically makes his living out of these one-line cracks mocking people,'' said Delaney, author of ''Seinology: The Sociology of Seinfeld,'' which examines the underpinnings of comedy. ''He's not a journalist, he's a comedian, and comedians tell jokes."

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