Jimmy Fallon Dedicates His Monologue To Orlando

Sometimes it takes a silly, clumsy, soft spoken comedian to drive an especially serious point home. On Monday night, Jimmy Fallon dedicated his opening monologue to the mass shooting in Orlando. But instead of getting excitable or igniting more fury, Fallon somberly put his focus on appealing to his audience's humanity and voiced a message of hope.

In a time where Hamilton, the musical surrounding forefather Alexander Hamilton and the birth of the United States, is all the rage, Fallon, too, called upon that revolutionary time and, like the musical, made it current and applicable to today. It wasn't to glorify the past, which we all know had its own slew of issues, but to remind us all of what America was initially about.

He said,

"This country was built on the idea that we do not all agree on everything. That we are a tolerant, free nation that encourages debate, free thinking, believing — or not — in what you choose."

Fallon brought the narrative back to the present in perhaps the most fitting way — by referencing his two young daughters, and how he'll have to explain this tragedy to them, and how much harder that will be if they're gay. That said, he continued on a hopeful note that we as a nation can change, and that, hopefully, his daughters can grow up in a more understanding and evolved America:

"Maybe there's a lesson in all this, a lesson in tolerance. We need to support each other's differences, and worry less about our own opinions. Get back to debate and away from believing or supporting the idea that if someone doesn't live the way you want them to live, you just buy a gun and kill them, bomb them up. That is not OK. We need to get back to being brave enough to accept that we have different opinions and that's OK because that is what America is built on. The idea that we can stand up, and speak our minds, and live our lives, and not be punished for that. Or mocked on the internet. Or killed by someone you don't know."

Fallon's monologue brings up a vital point: tolerance of one another can make all the difference. And it will, if we let it.