Comics tread lightly with Palin pregnancy

updated 10:37 p.m. ET Sept. 2, 2008

NEW YORK - The pregnancy of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's unwed daughter was fair game for late-night comics on Monday, but even the jokesters were careful.

Three of the comics, in fact, made Democrat John Edwards the butt of their jokes about the situation. Edwards, the former presidential candidate, admitted this summer to an affair after first denying it.

"Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months' pregnant," Jay Leno said near the top of his "Tonight" show monologue. "And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it."

Both Craig Ferguson and Conan O'Brien, who compete against each other in the early morning hours, went down the same road.

"I don't think that a young lady getting pregnant should even be news," said Ferguson, of CBS' "Late Late Show." "Unless John Edwards is the father. Then that is kinda news."

NBC's O'Brien joked that Palin said that "we should never have introduced her to John Edwards."

David Letterman, on CBS' "Late Show," made the pregnancy the subject of only his fifth and last joke about the selection of the Alaska governor as John McCain's running mate.

"Here's good news, ladies and gentlemen," Letterman said. "The Palin family crisis that we were talking about on Sunday and Monday, that has been solved now and, today, the baby is being adopted by Angelina Jolie."

Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" kept his lacerating wit away from the topic. There was only one allusion to it in a Samantha Bee weather forecast skit, when a cloud in the shape of a pregnant woman floated by.

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Leno, before moving on, touched on the situation with three gentle jokes. He said that apparently Palin's daughter is named "Juneau," a reference to the movie "Juno," about a hip unwed teenager who gives birth to her child.

His third joke was about telling McCain about the pregnancy, but "into his bad ear."

O'Brien's monologue made reference to the opening of the Republican National Convention.

"The theme for tonight's Republican convention is `Who is John McCain?'" O'Brien said. "Tomorrow night's theme is, `Who forgot to check if the vice-president's daughter is pregnant?'"

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