Opinion: Oops, Conan O’Brien suffers from a little premature jocularity tonight

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Funny lines are not unusual in Conan O’Brien’s opening monologue, even in his 9-day-old gig as new host of NBC’s ‘The Tonight Show.’

Tonight is no exception.

‘Speaking of President Obama,’ NBC’s new late-night host had in his Tuesday script, ‘earlier today, President Obama spoke at a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Half of the Wisconsin crowd had never seen an African American and the other half had never seen a skinny person.’

A funny comment for many, unless you’re among Wisconsin’s dominant white Cheeseheads. Some of them overweight. And these shows do always try to be topical.

Unfortunately, reports of Obama’s Green Bay town hall meeting, like Mark Twain’s death, are premature.

The town hall doesn’t happen until Thursday. Minutes before the show’s airtime in the East tonight, the show’s L.A. writers, asked for comment, were scrambling to determine what, if anything, to do. Clipping out the error is one possibility. Watch and see how they handle it.

(Update: 8:35 p.m. Pacific. No snipping for the Eastern time zone. They ran the joke as was.)

Maybe they could rerun Tuesday’s joke on Thursday’s show? Green Bay officials, btw, are already worried about an extra $30K in police overtime to protect the Great Change Agent this time.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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