Late-night TV hosts decry Las Vegas killings, gun laws

In the immediate aftermath of another horrific mass shooting, late night TV opened its collective heart -- again -- Monday with declarations of sympathy, support, outrage, and horror, followed by demands for sanity and congressional action. The reactions ranged from passionate to muted, angry to hopeful. The hosts -- as they have done so many times before -- felt compelled to say something.

But in the wake of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, late night TV clearly finds itself at a crossroads, uncertain how to match rhetoric with scale, or balance horror with entertainment. Hosts have entered terrain they probably never expected to enter, and must navigate it by sense of feel and obligation. With each successive shooting, their anger grows along with their sense of futility.

Johnny Carson never had to do this, not even during the worst days of Vietnam.

But they do. A reasonable question now then becomes: Should they?

Should late night talk show hosts -- who after the first commercial break then go to a light interview with someone pitching their next movie/show/album/whatever -- be compelled to address every tragedy in the context of a vessel designed to entertain? Should they assume the role of the national moral conscience -- a role once left to Walter Cronkite or Eric Sevareid -- during a moment so viscerally, desperately raw that any words, no matter how sincere or heartfelt, seem hollow?

Questions then become more complex, more fraught. Should they follow their calls for common sense gun legislation -- as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and James Corden and others did Monday night -- with more calls for such legislation each night? They have the bully pulpit. Surely they should use it in a consistent manner, intent on forcing the change they so eloquently demand.

But if they don’t, will their words just be words -- to be repeated the next time, for the next tragedy? Conan O’Brien even alluded to this conundrum Monday, when he noted that his head writer gave him the monologues he gave for Newtown and other tragedies, as guidance for what to say after Las Vegas.

The late night hosts have been put in a difficult, perhaps untenable, position.

But should they be in this position?

Here’s a common-sense answer and alternative. No, they shouldn’t. Instead, here’s what networks should do: In lieu of late night entertainment talk shows hours after a tragedy, the major networks should pre-empt them for news broadcasts. Pre-empt them the following night for news, too, if necessary, and the night after that. For those networks that don’t have news divisions, per se (Comedy Central, TBS), borrow a feed from CNN or some other network news venue.

There is precedent for this, and in recent history, too. During both Gulf Wars, the networks periodically pre-empted late night for news. In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, late night entertainment in New York came to complete halt, while it would be left to “Saturday Night Live” -- beginning on schedule 18 days later -- to effectively broker a re-entry. Recall Lorne Michaels’ famous question of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “Can we be funny?” with Giuliani replying, “Why start now?”

The networks would lose money with this plan -- and once not so long ago did -- but the networks and their valuable hosts should ask each of themselves what role THEY have to play in the aftermath of something so horrific? Indeed, “something” that news professionals are in the process of still sorting out?

Here’s a brief sampling of what already-horrified viewers heard last night:

Jimmy Kimmel tearing up, demanded action: “I just want to give you something to laugh about (but) lately, it feels like someone opened a window into hell.”

Stephen Colbert begged for common sense gun legislation: “What are we willing to do to combat pure evil? The answer can’t be nothing.”

Jimmy Fallon, taking the decidedly Fallonesques position, said that “we need to remember that good still exists in this world..” then pitched to Miley Cyrus, who covered a dolorous cover of Dido’s “No Freedom” -- with Adam Sandler by her side, looking even more morose.

Conan O’Brien: “ I will repeat what I said not long ago -- I don’t think it should be so easy for one demented person to kill so many people so quickly.”

Trevor Noah: “What’s been heartbreaking other than the lives lost is that I feel like people are becoming more accustomed to this news. I almost know how it’s going to play out: Shocked, hearts and prayers, then people will come out and say, ‘don’t talk about the guns . . .’”

James Corden: “I come from a place where we don’t have shootings of this frequency and it’s hard for me to fathom, but it should be hard for everyone one to fathom (but) how does every other developed country do better at preventing these attacks?”

Seth Meyers: “I would like to send my thoughts to the family of the victims and my thanks and appreciation to the first responders. . . . It always seems like the worst displays of humanity in this country are immediately followed by the best, and sadly, those are followed by no action at all. Then it repeats itself.”

Yup, it repeats itself, but the moment has now arrived for some genuine network reflection, too. Should late night comedians be our national mourners-in-chief -- even if their mourning is sincere and deeply heartfelt -- while the facts are still coming in? Should they be forced to bear their hearts, then effectively obliterate the sentiment 10 minutes later during some dumb interview?

Or should the networks do what’s right? Pre-empt these shows and leave it to the news divisions to attempt to make sense of the senseless.