Names and faces

For Jay Leno, Bill Clinton was the comic gift who kept giving. By one exhaustive count, the outgoing Tonight show host made 4,607 jokes at the former president’s expense during his time on the program. The Center for Media and Public Affairs cataloged nearly 44,000 jokes Leno made about political figures and celebrities at Tonight through Jan. 24. Leno is leaving the show after tonight. “Leno jokes about powerful people and he jokes about scandals. Bill Clinton is both,” said Robert Lichter, director of the Washington-area think tank and author of the coming book Politics is a Joke: How TV Comedians are Remaking Political Life. Not only is Clinton more than 1,000 jokes ahead of the runner-up (George W. Bush, 3,239 jokes), Leno’s top 10 targets also include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Leno’s concentration on politics is evident in the list of his top 10 targets. They include seven people who served as president or vice president or ran for the presidency. And just outside the top 10 are John McCain, Mitt Romney and John Kerry.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers decided long ago they were never going to mime alive performance. The band made an exception for the NFL, it turns out. The group’s bassist, Flea, said in a letter to fans posted on the group’s website Tuesday that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members pretended to play along to a pre-taped track of “Give It Away” during the Super Bowl halftime show as Anthony Kiedis sang live. The request came from NFL officials who felt it was too difficult to pull off a completely live performance because of potential sound problems. The admission came after observers noted Flea and his band mates weren’t plugged in while performing Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Flea wrote on the band’s website that the opportunity was too big for the lifelong football fans to turn down. After internal debate, dubiously checking with fellow musicians and consulting with headliner Bruno Mars, they decided it was “a surreal-like, once in a life time crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it.” The 51-yearold musician said the group prerecorded a unique instrumental track for the show. He didn’t directly address whether Mars also used recorded instrumental tracks, though he said Mars was aware that the band did.