Here Comes The Judge - Brian Locke, pg 651-655

Recap: The O.J. trial created a celerity out of Judge Lance Ito. He became the butt of jokes as the trial wore on over the process of a year. Prior to a comment made by Republican Senator Alphonse D’Amato, Lance Ito was used as a non racial joke source. After D’Amato made his remark about Ito the issues of using the likeness of Ito for the running gag of the Dancing Itos’ became tough for jay Leno to use. Especially after a comedian, Jack Cohen, makes on the fly jokes about what D’Amato said. This puts Jay Leno in a defensive position, as he clearly didn’t want to cross that line.

Comment: I watch the Tonight Show for Jay Leno’s humor and skits. The over all appearance is that he doesn’t like to offend people based on race. His Dancing Itos were briefly funny but for me they got old after a while. With so much attention in the media about the trial of O.J. it became hard to get any kind of news that at some point didn’t have O.J. stuff in it. I think the media made the issues of Ito’s race a bigger thing than it was. Yes, the Japanese Americans were treated with hostility and fear. That is what was going on during WWII. The Japanese had created a huge tide of fear across the world. I think for people of my generation, our bigger concerns have come from Vietnam and other incidents like this. The flare of racism will creep out at any point and be very prominent if the media has anything to do with it.