Denis Leary Promotes Rescue Me With Homophobic Slur, Jokes About His Children Burning Alive

If you are gearing up to promote your television series on a talk show, you have several choices: 1) You can prepare a TV-ready anecdote about something hilarious that happened on-set (See: Jonah Hill's story about being reprimanded by his hero while filming Curb Your Enthusiasm); 2) You can prepare a TV-ready anecdote about something interesting in your personal life (See: Kristen Stewart's description of her real-life pet wolves); or 3) If you are Denis Leary, you can put together a startlingly homophobic anecdote about something that was said in poor taste to Derek Jeter on the set of Rescue Me.

The coarse comic visited The Daily Show last night, where he first tried genuinely complimenting Jon Stewart's usage of puppets. When that did not go over well, the Rescue Me star told the audience about the time Derek Jeter tried complimenting Leary and Leary's co-star Steven Pasquale on their work as television heroes. What followed was a punchline that conflated acting with a homophobic slur (one that Leary has defended before) and, by extension, being a sissy. Gay firefighters will no doubt be thrilled. To further illustrate the gag, Leary went on to joke: "If one of my kids caught on fire, I would probably start screaming louder than them and then roll them around and scream and cry." Classy.

All of which raises the question: When is it right for a talk show host to scold his/her guest on-air -- and when is it right for a talk show host to double over with laughter in response to his guest's epithets, as Jon Stewart did last night? Consider Exhibit A:

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