Late Night Hosts, Guests React to Deadly Attack in Paris
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Meghan Sinclair/Team Coco(LOS ANGELES) — Conan O’Brien opened his TBS show Wednesday night with a statement about the deadly attack at the office of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
O’Brien said they were killed because the newspaper “made jokes that some group found offensive.”
O’Brien continued, “In this country, we just take it for granted that it’s our right to poke fun at the untouchable or the sacred, but today’s tragedy in Paris reminds us very viscerally that it’s a right some people are inexplicably forced to die for.”
O’Brien closed his remarks by saying, “All of us are terribly sad for the families of those victims, for the people of France and for anyone in the world tonight who now has to think twice before making a joke. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”
Twelve people were killed in the attack.
The attack was also a topic of conversation on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! with guest Bill Maher. The outspoken humorist and Real Time host said for someone in the humor business, the terror attacks hit close to home because the victims were executed, “for the crime of being satirists,” before adding emphatically, “This has to stop.”
Maher vented that political correctness is making his “fellow liberals” turn “away from the truth.”
“We have to not avoid who did this. Who did this, Jimmy?” Maher asked the host. “Well, we presume…” Kimmel hesitated, “No, it’s not a ‘presume,'” Maher interrupted. “It’s Muslim terrorists. This happens way too frequently. It’s like Groundhog Day, except the groundhog keeps getting his head cut off.”
“I know most Muslim people would not carry out an attack like this,” Maher said, “but here’s the important point: hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, ‘Well, we don’t approve of violence, but if you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.’…Absolutely, that is mainstream in the Muslim world: that, ‘If you make fun of the Prophet, you get what’s coming to you.'”
Maher said liberals should care about jihadi executions of gays, saying, if [in Vatican City] they were, “chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn’t there be a bigger outcry among liberals? I ask you,” Maher said to applause.
David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers did not discuss the Paris attack on their respective shows.
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