Given how little time David Letterman has left at the desk, the Late Show has in recent weeks been teeming with heartfelt tributes to the host. Perhaps the best of those tributes came on Friday, when Norm MacDonald concluded his final stand up set on the show by tearing up and saying a few words about “the greatest talk show host who ever lived.”
The SNL icon began by noting that, at age 13, he went to a talk show taping in Toronto and saw Letterman tell the greatest stand up joke he’d ever heard. After retelling that joke, MacDonald dispensed with his famous deadpan to confess that “Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental. If something is true it’s not sentimental. And I say in truth, I love you.” Moving words, those.
