... is here no more.

"Heere's Johnny!" cheered Ed
As we started the party in bed.
For a whole generation
Carson feted the nation
And now "Heere's Johnny!" is dead.

Extract from today's NYTimes:

"In his monologue and in his time, Mr. Carson impaled the foibles of seven presidents and their aides as well as the doings of assorted nabobs and stuffed shirts from the private sector: corporate footpads and secret polluters, tax evaders, preening lawyers, idiosyncratic doctors, oily accountants, defendants who got off too easily and celebrities who talked too much.

All these oddments were sliced and diced so neatly, so politely, so unmaliciously, with so much alacrity, that even the stuffiest conservative Republicans found themselves almost smiling at Mr. Carson's Nixon-Agnew jokes and uptight doctrinaire liberal Democrats savored his pokes at Lyndon B. Johnson and the Kennedys."

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/artsspecial/index.html?hp

Mr. Letterman said: "All of us who came after are pretenders. We will not see the likes of him again. He gave me a shot on his show and in doing so, he gave me a career. A night doesn't go by that I don't ask myself, 'What would Johnny have done?' "

Mr. Leno said: "No single individual has had as great an impact on television as Johnny. He was the gold standard. It's hard to believe he's actually gone. This is a tremendous loss for everyone who Johnny made laugh for so many years."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/arts/television/24rcar.html

Here is the monologue from Johnny Carson's final "The Tonight Show" on May 22, 1992:

"One of the questions people have been asking me, especially this last month, is, "What's it like doing 'The Tonight Show,' and what does it mean to me?"

Well, let me try to explain it. If I could magically, somehow, that tape you just saw, make it run backwards. I would like to do the whole thing over again. It's been a hell of a lot of fun. As an entertainer, it has been the great experience of my life, and I cannot imagine finding something in television after I leave tonight that would give me as much joy and pleasure, and such a sense of exhilaration, as this show has given me. It's just hard to explain."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/23/carson.monolgue/