Here’s a new twist in the Michael Jackson trial for you: a judge’s gag order is interfering with comedian Jay Leno’s gags.
No joke:
Attorneys for the star of NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” said Judge Rodney S. Melville’s sweeping order barring anyone involved in the case from discussing it outside court “could be interpreted to limit Mr. Leno’s ability to publicly speak about the trial.”
Leno’s motion, released by Santa Barbara County Superior Court on Wednesday, was filed Feb. 18, a day after his lawyers said his subpoena was served.
“This motion was made on the grounds that this court could not possibly have intended its gag order, which was issued more than a year ago, to limit public personalities like Mr. Leno from commenting on public proceedings in this case,” attorneys Theodore Boutrous and Michael H. Dore wrote.
Applying the gag order to Leno would be prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment and the California Constitution, the motion said.
If the gag order is applied anyway, the motion said, the court should clarify that the order “only limits Mr. Leno’s ability to disclose evidence of which he may have direct, first-hand knowledge, assuming only for the sake of argument that any such evidence exists.”
What’s the big fuss, Jay? You don’t need jokes to get laughs about Michael Jackson. Just show a picture of him with his lipstick and plastic nose…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.