Jay Leno’s monologue tonight, coming on the heels of his monologues for the past week, sort of annoyed me. I statused about it, but wanted to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

Jay, like every other comedian in late night, is continuing to take potshots at the NBC executives. But from him, it sounds ingracious and ungrateful. And he took a potshot at Conan tonight designed to reinforce the point that, in his own mind, he is a bigger victim in this mess than Conan.

I don’t buy it.

I do understand why Jay sees himself as a victim. He feels that he was forced out of the “Tonight Show,” even though he was winning his time slot, and now he’s being hastily forced out of his prime time show in a way that makes him seem like a failure.

But the fact of the matter is, if Jay, Conan, and Jimmy Fallon were all thrown out the window, Jay landed on top, his fall cushioned by those beneath him. Everything that’s happened in the week since the cancellation of the “Jay Leno Show” has been designed to placate Jay, at the expense of Conan and Jimmy, and so Jay’s whining comes off as, well, whining.

Let’s not forget: Jay agreed in 2004 to give up “The Tonight Show” in 2009. He issued a statement saying that he was pleased with the orderly transition. Was he forced into that decision?

Well, in late 2008, he had enough clout that NBC executives made a drastic change in their prime time schedule in order to prevent him from taking his services to FOX or ABC. Why would he not have had that same clout in 2004? No, I think he agreed to the transition and then had Brett Favre-like second thoughts as 2009 drew closer. So for him to whine about NBC executives “firing” him from “The Tonight Show” is neither accurate nor gracious.

If Jay feels betrayed by NBC management, fine. But he should remind himself that he’s getting back the time slot he claims he never wanted to leave to begin with, and that by doing so he is delivering a career setback to (and this is, of course, opinion) a much more original and talented comic writer and performer. In other words, he should man up, adopt a big-shoulders policy, and let everyone else take potshots at NBC executives, and at Jay Leno. He should stop whining and spend his time trying to convince the American public that he deserves to return to his former post.

Of course, perhaps he’s trying to mimic Letterman, who has turned griping about network executives into a minor art form. It wouldn’t be the first time Leno’s stolen comic material from Letterman.