NEW YORK -- A judge has taken the bite out of a $10 million lawsuit filed against Johnny Carson by a Long Island dentist who wanted to sink his teeth into the entertainer for jokes he made against the man's profession.
Justice William McCooe dismissed the suit Friday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan and then gave Melville dentist Michael Mendelson some words of advice -- lighten up.
The judge told the dentist that the jokes Carson made in his monologues were all in fun and should not be taken seriously.
'Levity was the thrust of the dentist sequence ... the audience, including plaintiff, were instructed not to take the remarks literally.'
Mendelson filed the suit against Carson and NBC, complaining that the jokes were insulting. The comedian's bantering about dentists began on April 18, 1986, when he told viewers: 'Imagine dentists going out of business. I haven't been so happy about a group disbanding since the Gestapo.'
Mendelson first wrote Carson a letter demading a 'smirk-free' apology.
Carson responded with a barrage of dentist jokes, prefaced with the comment, 'Lighten up, Michael Mendelson.'
As the talk show host rattled off the jokes, the name Michael Mendelson, D.D.S. 'was in flashing marquee light behind' the entertainer, said the dentist's lawyer, Alexander Kaplan.
'Mike, you're a member of a privileged profession,' Carson said. 'There are only two groups of professionals that spend their working days watching water go round and round in a little bowl -- dentists and men's room attendants.'
He described dentistry as an 'honorable profession dating back to the Spanish Inquisition' and said the only phrase more feared than 'nuclear war' was 'root canal.'
Finally, Carson said, 'Were it not for dentists we would never have the opportunity to look up a grown man's nose.' --- A man who would be king
