Chinese Gov't Hires Jay Leno to be New Spokesman

In the wake of recent mining and transportation industry disasters, the central government of the People's Republic of China today announced that it had hired American late night talk show personality Jay Leno in the capacity of official spokesman and public relations agent.

Leno's first day on the job was made even more difficult by the explosion at a coal mine on Thursday that left more than one hundred underpaid and neglected Chinese workers dead, and hundreds more injured. But Leno, a standup comic by trade, seemed to take the added pressure in stride, reprising his famous Doritos® sales pitch in saying, "blow up all the lowly, disenfranchised citizens you want--we'll make more!" Leno went on to add that, "Mao didn't say, 'the people are everything.' What he really said was, 'overtaxing, and then abandoning, the people are everything.' Hey, is this thing on? Take my wife--please! I'm here all week, folks; try the veal."

Chinese government leaders were vacationing at their luxury ocean resort at Beidaihe, just east of Beijing, and so were unavailable for comment on the mine explosion, or on Leno's hiring. A simple ventilation fan and a couple of caged canaries could have prevented the explosion, say international mining safety experts; the Chinese goverment released a "White Paper" report last year in which it was calculated that the average Chinese citizen's life is worth 3 RMB (42 cents), making the purchasing and installation of safety equipment for anything less than fifty million Chinese people "fiscally untenable".