Conan Is First Major Late Night Host to Make Bill Cosby Rape Joke

The mainstream media may have gone all in on the Bill Cosby rape allegations story this week, but over on late night television, there has been near-radio silence. At least that was the case until last night, when Conan O’Brien became the first major late night host to make a joke about the Cosby situation.

The moment was buried midway through O’Brien’s popular “Celebrity Survey” segment, in which he lets three celebrities finish the same sentence. In this case, “Where there’s smoke there’s usually…” was finished with “fire” by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Josh Brolin. But Bill Cosby “wrote”: “The smoke is lying.” O’Brien took a nice, long pause, whistling and looking around as the crowd’s laugh died down.

Watch video below, via TBS (Cosby joke starts at 2:30):

Aside from O’Brien, the only other late night mentions of the allegations against Cosby also appeared on cable. But in both cases, Cosby was not really the target of the jokes told.

During his monologue on HBO’s Real Time Friday night, Bill Maher used Cosby as a punchline to comment on President Barack Obama’s post-midterms action on issues like the environment and immigration.

“If you’re a Republican, you see Obama as Bill Cosby sexually assaulting the Constitution,” Maher joked. “Oh yes I did,” he added, clearly acknowledging the silence on the issue from the rest of the late-night field.

Watch video below, via HBO:

And, then there was Joel McHale, who let one Entertainment Tonight host comments about Cosby following an “exclusive” interview with accuser Janice Dickinson speak for themselves on his show The Soup.

Watch video below, via E!:

But meanwhile, the big three network late night hosts — Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel — along with Seth Meyers and Craig Ferguson, have so far decided to give Cosby a pass. Even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert resisted the urge to comment on Don Lemon’s bizarre line of questioning about oral sex on CNN Tuesday night.

Perhaps they just feel there are more pressing things to joke about, or they don’t feel comfortable targeting a fellow comedian who has not been formally charged or convicted for the heinous crimes he allegedly committed. Overall, these men have a reverence for Cosby that could be preventing them from going there in the way O’Brien did last night.

In the past year, Cosby has made appearances on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He was scheduled to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman this week, but ended up canceling without explanation last minute.

If Cosby is innocent — a possibility that seems more and more unlikely by the day — the only way for him to clear up his legacy will be to come forward and speak out in his defense. Saying “I don’t talk about it” and demanding that denial never be shown, as he did during a just-released interview with AP this month, is not going to cut it.

A rescheduled sit-down with Letterman, who has dealt with his own, less serious issues surrounding infidelity and blackmail, could be exactly what Cosby needs, either to apologize for his past or publicly deny the allegations for the first time.

[Photo via screengrab]

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.