Conan: “Give a White Male From Harvard a Freakin' Chance!”

As much as we love that Conan C. O’Brien '85 was once one of us Harvard students, we can’t help but lament his participation in the the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

And apparently, neither can he. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the comedian recently participated in a panel discussion at the University of Southern California where he commented on why he didn’t tend to hire fellow Lampooners to join him in late night TV. However, no love was lost, as Conan proclaimed, “I wasn’t mad at them, I just wanted the show to have a different sensibility.”

Could it be that the Lampoon is not all it’s cracked up to be? Gasp! We would never have guessed.

But don’t you worry, many giddy Lampooners found good ole’ desk jobs at the right-hand of David Letterman despite the fact that, as O’Brien’s fellow panelist and Lampoon alum Lawrence O’Donnell ’76 noted, being from the Lampoon was seen at the time as “a strike against you.”

O’Brien also took this opportunity to joke about the rough life of a white male Harvard grad. "Yes, people should stop discriminating against us white people from Harvard," he apparently said. "Enough! Give a white male from Harvard a freakin' chance is what we're here to say!”

Interestingly, panelist Gregory M. Daniels ‘85 credited his classmate Conan with encouraging him not to take “crap jobs” at the beginning of his career.

Funny, then, how both deigned to work for the Lampoon once upon a time.