"Conan O'Brien...has gone through one of the most amazing transformations in television history," a penitent Shales wrote in 1996.

By that point, O'Brien's ratings were up despite stiffer competition, and viewers and critics had warmed to his go-for-broke style, annoying laugh and unruly hair.

"They say Einstein didn't speak until he was nine. Conan didn't really speak until he was about 20," says Rodman Flender '84, who worked with O'Brien at the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

The lesson, he says, is that it's okay to be a late bloomer.

But there's another possibility: maybe O'Brien has always been that good--and the rest of us were just hopelessly behind when we knocked the red-headed giant.

Michael L. Reiss '81, a Lampoon alum who worked with O'Brien at HBO's "Not Necessarily the News" and Fox's "The Simpsons," argues that Shales and other converts are just covering up their initial error in judgement when they claim there have been recent improvements in "Late Night."

"The public's perception has changed more than the show itself," says Reiss, who is unwavering in his support of O'Brien.