One of three late night hosts to air a new episode on Friday night, "The Late Late Show" host Craig Ferguson replaced his opening monologue with a somber reflection on the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado.
In the updated introduction, Ferguson explains that Friday night's episode was recorded the night before the tragedy occurred. Unfortunately, a large portion of his monologue was dedicated to "The Dark Knight Rises." He decided against scrapping the entire episode because he thought it would be "unfair" to the fans, but instead recorded the four-minute video at his desk to explain the position he was in. He couldn't ignore the story, but also knew that a silly monologue was no place to mention it.
"The difficulty in the job that I have sometimes, if you do a show everyday, is to be topical. But at the same time I try for the most part to ignore stories which are grizzly because it's not part of my job [...]. I can't ignore this one but neither can I talk about it in front of an audience with a skeleton robot... That doesn't make sense either."
Stressing that the point of his job is to provide "a bit of fun and something easy before you go to sleep," Ferguson also directly addressed the Colorado shooting victims, expressing his sympathies for the families and adding that we are all "diminished" by what happened.
"If you are watching in Denver, or in Aurora I should say, and if you are any way connected to this awful business; I'm sorry. I'm sorry that that happened. I know it's just awful, and my thoughts and my sympathies go to the families and to the people who were there. And just remember that we are all diminished by this. Every time something like this happens, we are all diminished by it."
As for the other late night hosts who aired new episodes Friday night, Jimmy Fallon's monologue was made no mention of the tragedy, meaning he either decided not to address it and/or also recorded his episode on Thursday night.
Jay Leno, however, added a 30-second addendum to his Friday night monologue regarding the tragedy. He echoed Ferguson's point that the job of the late night host is to provide something lighthearted for people at the end of a long day and also offered his condolences, but then quickly moved on to his prepared jokes.
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