Late-night TV hosts tread lightly with Palin

Late-night comics tread lightly when referring to the pregnancy of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's unwed daughter.

CBS' "Late Show" host David Letterman 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."

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

"Gov. Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months' pregnant," Jay Leno said near the top of his NBC "Tonight" show monologue Tuesday. "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."

O'Brien joked on his NBC "Late Night" show that Palin said that "we should never have introduced her to John Edwards."

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.