Whenever tragedy strikes, it’s a confounding position for all of comedy whether to address it or not and, if so addressing it, how to go about it. Many off-color, disgusting jokes are made, but it’s all out of this need to cope, to relate, a need for levity. 

Fortunately, there are comedians like Stephen Colbert who know how to just comedically address such a thing as the tragedy at the Boston Marathon.

Watch him do so on the opening of last night’s Colbert Report.