The most memorable thing Jay Leno ever did on the Tonight Show, at least in my mind, was his Jaywalking routine. You probably remember it well. Jay would walk up to people on the street, generally young people in their teens or twenties, microphone in hand, and ask them simple questions about current events or history. We were supposed to laugh as these people would be stumped by such questions as, "What happened in 1776?" or "Who was President during World War II?" etc . . . It was all supposed to be just a gag, but I think Jay performed a valuable public service in opening people's eyes to the state of education in America.
Sometimes the people on the street were faking it. You could tell they knew the answer but wanted to go along with the routine so they pretended to be ignorant. My dad once told me about a time he saw a guy hypnotize people on stage. He'd asked for volunteers from the audience and after weeding out most of them, had a few saps left who would do anything. One guy barked like a dog, another pretended to be a houseplant. My dad thought they were all faking.
I can see how that would happen. Put yourself in their shoes. Nobody wants to be a wet blanket. Suppose you're at some performance. You raise your hand without thinking, now you're up on stage. Pretty soon you're one of the only one's left and it's up to you to pretend you're in a trance, or the act dies and no one has a good time. Same thing with Jay. You're walking down the street on a beautiful day. There's a commotion. "Wow, is that . . . " you say to yourself, "Jay Leno?" Next thing you know he's standing right in front of you. You can't believe you're actually face to face with Jay Leno himself! You're nervous, excited, everybody's laughing, he pops the question, "Who was this man?" he asks. [He shows you a portrait of Ben Franklin.] You know it's Ben Franklin, but you don't say that because it wouldn't be funny, so you say something else. (laugh, laugh)
That happened, but most of the time people weren't pretending to be so ignorant. For me at least, that's what was so disturbing and revealing about the Jaywalking routine. These people really didn't know what ocean is to the west of California, whose image is on our penny, or some such thing.
John Hinderaker of Powerlineblog.com has a recent post about his own Jaywalking experience. http://powerlineblog.com/ "Another Sign of the Apocalypse" Hinderaker tells about how he showed a $50 bill to a desk clerk at a local gym, asking her whose image it was on the bill. She didn't know, so he proceeded to tell her. "Do you know who he was?" Hinderaker asked. "You don't recall ever hearing of him?" he asked. She didn't. I have been reading Powerline for years, and I admire Hinderaker a great deal, but in this case it strikes me as rude what he did. I think he stepped over a boundary just as surely as though he'd asked her how much money she had in her pocket. "It's none of you're damn business!" could have been her rightful reply.
Whether or not Hinderaker overstepped his bounds, the point remains that the young clerk probably didn't have a clue as to who Ulysses Grant was. We can thank Jay Leno for helping to open our eyes to the crisis, and for propmting ordinary people like Hinderaker to take matters into their own hands and test the premise behind Jaywalking, which is that many of today's young people really are that ignorant.
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