Couric, Uncorked: CBS Anchor Enjoys Night of Naughty Comedy

On Friday, May 9, counterintuitively lewd comedian Sarah Silverman appeared at Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall in a benefit show for Project A.L.S., which raises money for the study and treatment of a not-very-hilarious neurodegenerative disease. Instead, her monologue evoked an old favorite: starving African children. “I don’t send them money,” Ms. Silverman deadpanned, tugging girlishly at a pleated black skirt she said was too short, “because I don’t want them to spend it on drugs.”

She also weighed in on the Democratic primary (“I like the black guy, but I like Hillary, too”) and joked about approaching Barack Obama nervously at a Los Angeles fund-raiser and asking, “‘Senator Obama, what are you going to do to reduce the national debt?’”

“And he said a really interesting thing. He said, ‘I’m Kanye West.’”

CBS anchor Katie Couric arrived late and very tired from Chicago, where she’d spent the day shooting a feature for 60 Minutes, and descended the stairs to an after-party with the actor Rob Morrow, who had emceed the event. “I think she’s really funny,” she said of Ms. Silverman. “Really crude. But really funny.”

What was her favorite joke of the evening? “Some of them were pretty outrageous,” said Ms. Couric, who was clad in a shiny, sleeveless gown. “I don’t want to say they were that funny because then who knows what kind of brouhaha it would create?”

Mr. Morrow had introduced Ms. Silverman by declaring that it was him, and not the star Matt Damon, with whom she had been infamously intimately involved, as explicated in a hit video short. “There’s not a lot of people she trusts with her stool,” he explained, in case the audience missed it the first time.

At the party, Mr. Morrow was approached by a wide-eyed woman with blond curls. “Are you really her lover?” she asked, with apparent sincerity.

“No,” Mr. Morrow replied. “I wish.”