This clip has already been almost everywhere today, but in the interest of Leno-bashing completeness, I feel like we should post it here as well. In it, Letterman and guest Howard Stern discuss the late night wars, and Dave’s complicated relationship with his nemesis. It’s clear neither guy cares too much for Leno, but Letterman does his best to try to remain as diplomatic as he can possibly be considering Leno screwed him out of his dream job and then proceeded to mail said job in for years. Which is to say, he does a funny impression of Jay and high-fives Stern when the newest “America Got Talent” host says he refuses to do “The Tonight Show” even though he’s an NBC employee now. Quite a bit of restraint, all things considered.

One other item of note: I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but sometimes when I do the What’s On Tonight post, I swap out Leno’s name with ones like “Butthead McGoo” or “Chins McFartypants.” This is admittedly not very nice, but then again, neither is going to disturbing lengths to hose two much funnier and more passionate people out a show they both had a pretty good claim to at the time. Turnabout is fair play, Mr. Fartypants.

If you take Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert out of the equation, then the answer to the above question is probably yes. Over on the the AV Club, ahead of Jimmy Fallon’s third-year anniversary, Steven Hyden has come around to what I’ve been saying elsewhere since Fallon became the only network talk show host to come out of the Leno/Conan controversy unscathed.

Fallon’s transformation from widely derided lightweight—a man assumed to have secret knowledge of where Lorne Michaels keeps the bodies buried in order to continue getting such good jobs—to heir apparent to the King Of Late Night crown is complete and shocking. Jimmy Fallon is now so likeable that it’s actually a cliché to point out how likeable he is. Not only has he become the opposite of what he used to be, he’s made thinking otherwise seem mean-spirited. He is the puppy-basket of late-night talk-show hosts.

Hyden continues on to say that Fallon “has the brightest future of any late-night host.” I don’t disagree. As someone who grew up on Dave, disliked Fallon on “SNL” and hated his short-lived movie career, it took me a while to warm up to him, but now if I bother to watch any of the late night network talk shows at all, it’s always Fallon.

Here’s the thing: If Dave and Leno are cut from the same cloth as Johnny Carson, most of the rest of them are clearly molded after Dave — Conan’s more eggheaded, Ferguson is more acerbic, and Kimmell is more meat-headed, but they all seem to have a similar self-deprecating, mainstream “edgy” approach. Their shows are all nearly identical. They simply put their own spin and personality on the same format that has been in the works for 50 years: Monologue, segment, personal anecdote, interviews, musical guest, credits.

While Fallon has borrowed a lot of those elements, he’s put a strangely refreshing post-irony spin on them. He’s amiable and awkwardly charming in the way that the way the others are not. He tries new things, some of which fail, some of which succeed. But he’s not trotting out the same gimmicks to the point of tiresomeness. The guy plays board games with his guests for God’s sake.

What’s most refreshing, however, is his lack of irony. He’s not sarcastic. He’s not mean-spirited. He doesn’t put others down, and as much as I love Letterman, his brand of crankiness does not jibe with our current cultural landscape. I don’t want a bitter old coot railing about the problems of a monkey on a rock. At that time of night, I want a guy who looks like he’s having a good time, and Fallon’s good-natured, goofball spirit is infectious. He is, as Hyden describes him, “the puppy-basket of late-night talk-show hosts.”

It doesn’t hurt, either, that he has the best house band on TV in The Roots. Moreover, nothing on network late night TV has topped this in the last five years (except maybe Stephen Colbert’s rendition of “Friday,” also on Fallon’s show).

(Source: AV Club)

“Hey, did you hear about this? This is in the news: the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, passed away on Saturday. Yup, yup, it’s true. They say he SMALL JOKE while WEARING SUNGLASSES, and it’s rumored that AMERICAN POP CULTURE CELEBRITY will take over.”

I hate late night monologues. Just everything about them: the set-up, the formula, the body swaying to indicate an “I’m just joking” demeanor, the conversational asides in the middle of the joke, the repetition of certain words and names, and most of all, the oh-so-topical punchlines. I don’t usually watch “Letterman” or “Kimmel” or even “Conan,” simply because I can’t stand the first 10 minutes of every show (I also don’t watch the other 50 when it comes to “Leno.”) The text above, that’s pretty much the route every late-night host took to tell their Kim Jong-il’s dead joke(s) last night. But can you match the joke with said host? No cheating! Here’s the first, with the other three — as well as the answers— after the jump.

Well, in North Korea, they announced the passing of their supreme leader Kim Jong-il, and his younger son will take over. At first, there was speculation that power could be passed down to Kim’s two sisters, Kourtney Jong-il and Khloe Jong-il…And Michele Bachmann, foreign affairs not her strong suit, when she was told of the Supreme Leader’s death, she said, “I didn’t even know Diana Ross was sick.” And Rick Perry, y’know, Rick Perry, Rick Perry didn’t fare much better. When he was told about Kim Jong-il, he said, “I never heard of him. Then again, I don’t listen to that rap music.”

Hey guys, huge international news, you guys. Kim Jong-il, the crazy leader of North Korea who hated us, that guy. He passed away over the weekend, and get this: his 28-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, is taking over. It won’t be easy, because he’s got some big sunglasses to fill. It’s going to be tough.

Hey, here’s something: you know that Kim Jong-il, you know who I’m talking about? The evil dictator of North Korea? Guess what: dropped dead. Yup, yeah. Thank you, Seal Team Six. Now everyone’s worried who’s going to take over for Kim Jong-il. They think it’s going to be his son, Kim W.-il. He’s also survived by his daughter, Kim Jong-dashian. And just about now, Osama bin Laden is probably showing Kim Jong-il around Hell. So now the only tiny tyrant left is Mayor Bloomberg.

Gotta talk about this shocking news. Big, big story. Kim Jong-il died yesterday. You all heard about that, right? They have not named his successor yet, but the rumor is that it’s going to be Ryan Seacrest. That guy gets EVERYTHING, and he says he can fit it into his schedule. This is the latest: yesterday North Korea leader Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack. That was the cause. No one knows what triggered it, but he apparently had a lot of money riding on the Denver Broncos. Crazy, strange facts are coming out about Kim Jong-il today: it’s being reported, this is true, that schoolchildren in North Korea were taught that Kim Jong-il did not urinate or defecate. That’s true, yeah, so today, most schoolchildren just assumed that their Fearless Leader exploded.

Answers below this picture of Jay Leno giving Krusty a bath:

1. Leno; 2. Fallon; 3. Letterman; 4. Conan

I say this, and I don’t say it lightly: Jay Leno is Satan, or at least made in Satan’s image. Leno is not for people who want to turn their brains off after a long day of work; Leno is for people biologically incapable of turning their brain on. Show me a Leno fan, and I’ll show you incontrovertible proof that there’s no such thing as evolution. He is a soft-brained meatsack, late-night comedic sludge. He is to comedy what DRANO is to an esophagus. And after 17 years, David Letterman has finally beaten him during a sweeps month.

In the November sweep, CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” beat NBC’s “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” among adults 18 to 49 for the first time since 1994, according to Nielsen. Letterman scored a 0.9 rating over Leno’s 0.8. (Source: LA Times)

Look: I grew up on Letterman. Letterman was a childhood hero of mine, but I admit I don’t pay much attention to his show anymore, not since the affair with his underlings knocked him off the pedestal upon which I held him. But he’s still ten times the talk-show host that Leno is, and as Leno’s ratings continue to fall, NBC will finally rue the day they screwed over Conan O’Brien. This is a small victory but it’s a victory for humanity, for comedy, and for common decency. The fact that “The Daily Show” (0.7) lags behind both shows, however, is criminal, and more evidence that Nielsen boxes were designed by Satan’s minions.

Yesterday I posted the baffling Hermain Cain ad that featured chief of staff Mark Block taking a drag from a cigarette and Cain breaking into a slow, creepy smile. It was obviously ripe for parody, and late-night hosts went after it with gusto. Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, and Stephen Colbert all created similar spoofs of the commercial. (I’m sure Jay Leno will tackle it some time early next year.)

Not only have I embedded the videos below, but I’ve also ranked them because I enjoy stirring up pointless discussion. For further reading on this matter, please see my defining work in the genre, EMILY > ZOOEY.

THIRD PLACE: Letterman

SECOND PLACE: Conan

FIRST PLACE: Colbert

The slow smile competition at the end seals it. If you don’t want to watch the entire video, at least watch the final minute so you can see Colbert’s smile more slowly than Cain.

People enjoyed yesterday’s Aubrey Plaza GIFs so much that I decided to post her appearance on Letterman last night. She looks great, and she’s really funny even though her unsmiling, deadpan delivery doesn’t make for the most lively interview.

Surprisingly, starting at the 5:30 mark, Plaza spends the second half of the interview talking about the stroke she suffered when she was 20 and a student at NYU. It’s the first time she’s ever discussed it on TV, and to my knowledge she never discussed it publicly before Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Apparently she lost control of the right side of her body and was stricken with expressive aphasia (the inability to speak) for three days. And as we all learned from Serene Branson, expressive aphasia is hilarious. Scary, but hilarious. Like a bear in a sidecar.

As I’ve stated before, I can’t watch David Letterman due to the rage blackouts I suffer when I hear or see Paul Shaffer. But Letterman can still pull some ballsy moves: on last night’s show, he reacted to a death threat on an extremist Muslim message board by basing his monologue and Top Ten list around the threat (videos below).

And why not? It’s not like the poster, someone using the alias Umar al-Basrawi, knows anything about Letterman:

“Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi … to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?” Al-Basrawi wrote, referring to El Sayyid Nosair, convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane, and to Letterman, who is not Jewish. [LA Times]

Dude, David Letterman’s from Indiana. If there are any Jews in Indiana, they’re only there by accident. Hell, I’ve made more serious death threats online. Not that the FBI needs to look into that. Let’s just forget I ever brought this up.

According to a group that tracks extremist websites, David Letterman has been targeted by an online jihadist group. From The Hollywood Reporter:

The CBS late-night host was threatened by a frequent online commenter who called on Muslims to kill Letterman after being upset that the on-air personality made a slashing motion across his neck while discussing the death of senior al-Qaida member Ilyas Kashmiri, the NY Daily News reports.

The poster, who goes by the name Umar al-Basrawi, reportedly wrote “Is there not amongst you a Sayyid Nosair al-Masri (may Allah release him) to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever. Just as Sayyid (may Allah release him) did with the Jew Kahane.”

Letterman is not of Jewish decent.

Ok. Three things:

1) If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a lazy jihadist. You couldn’t take 60 seconds and Google Letterman’s religion? Come on, guy.

2) The title of the page the THR story is on is “David Letterman Becomes A Jihadist Target,” but they shortened it for the web address to “david-letterman-becomes-a-jihadist.” Which, quite frankly, would be a MUCH bigger story.

3) I don’t see the point of threatening comedians like Letterman or the “South Park” guys. Don’t jihadists have much bigger fish to fry? I understand it’s not awesome to have jokes made at your expense, whether they be real or perceived, but I’ll never understand why you’d need to call for someone’s death over it. Then again, the word “extreme” is right there in “extremist,” so, you know, there’s that. Regardless, all the best to Dave.

Harrison Ford gave one of the strangest late-night interviews of 2010 with his spaced-out appearance on “Conan,” and now he’s taken the lead in 2011 with last night’s trip to Letterman’s couch. As the Cajun Boy noted at Uproxx, Ford is rumored to be one of the biggest stoners in Hollywood, and last night’s interview will do absolutely nothing to dispel that. Even after the oddity of the Conan appearance, it’s still jarring to see Han Solo/Indiana Jones/Jack Ryan on TV talking like James Franco.

The 15-minute interview is embedded below, and I watched the entire thing even though I have the attention span of a fruit fly. There’s so much to love: the spacey look on Ford’s face as he walks onstage, a surprisingly excellent series of Elizabeth Taylor jokes, Ford disparaging the Grand Canyon, his rambling introduction to the Cowboys & Aliens clip, and horseback riding. Yes, horseback riding (it’s what they called acting with Liz Taylor back in the day).

James Whittemore, a 22-year-old aspiring actor, was arrested early Sunday morning after he concluded a drunken bender by smashing the glass doors and lobby of the Ed Sullivan Theater, the home of “The Late Show with David Letterman.” Stand by for hilarious reporting from the New York Daily News…

Whittemore, tore through the box-office and lobby of the historic Ed Sullivan Theater, shattering the front doors and upending trash cans, a source close to the investigation said.

Whittemore, of Harlem, apparently used only his feet to kick in the doors, police sources said.

I know that it’s a shame to do something like that to a historic old theater, but man… that sounds like a blast. When I was 22, one of my favorite things to do in the world was get drunk and break things. Game respect game.

The “blind drunk” thespian was charged with burglary and criminal mischief, and accused of at least $2,000 in damage, cops said. He was hospitalized with a cut on his forehead.

Whittemore, who is originally from Enfield, Conn, is a singer and actor who has appeared in regional shows, including “Celebration of the Sixties” at the Tropicana Resort Casino in Atlantic City and “We Got the Beat” at Six Flags New England in Springfield, Mass.

OH MY GOD YES. How was that information not in the headline? “Man Who Sang Go-Gos Song at Six Flags Trashes Letterman Theater.” Don’t bury the lede, people.

He’s a fan of all the Boston sports teams, according to Facebook.

Change 2: “Red Sox Fan Who Sang Go-Gos Song at Six Flags Trashes Letterman Theater.”

OW-AH DRUNKEN RAMPAGES AHH GRITTIAH THAN YOWAH DRUNKEN RAMPAGES!

He’s also known for quoting another off-the-deep-end actor, Charlie Sheen, on Twitter. Repeating one Sheen-ism, Whittemore tweeted on April 9: “I have one gear. Go go go.”

Added Whittemore: “I have only one favorite band. The Go-Gos.”

“He was the life of a party, in a good way,” said one of his roommates, Charles McGowan.

“Like, if you needed a window smashed or trash can upended, he was the man for the job.”

Anyway, “The Late Show” stage was padlocked and unharmed, and Letterman will tape at the normal time today. Like I always say, no harm, no foul. Just misdemeanor charges.