Late-night television kicked off last night sparing the 78-year-old lawyer Dick Cheney shot in a hunting accident Saturday, but continued to target the vice president.

"Happy Valentine's Day. Good news, good news today -- so far Dick Cheney has not shot anybody," David Letterman said in his "Late Night" monologue on CBS.

"But the real question now is -- is this a one-time thing or will the vice president try to kill again?" Mr. Letterman said later.

Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" showed a color-coded threat level chart like that used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying that, based on lawyer Harry Whittington's heart attack, "we're going to downgrade the condition of the story from 'Incredibly Hilarious' to 'Still funny, but, mmm, now a little sad.' "

Mr. Stewart still dedicated the first part of the show to the shooting, showing several news clips about the incident.

"Please Mr. Whittington, get better," he pleaded.

Political humorist Bill Maher, a guest on MSNBC's "Hardball", said, "I think the comedy gods are smiling on me," and went on to skewer the vice president.

Since Mr. Cheney injured Mr. Whittington with a blast of shotgun pellets while hunting quail at a private Texas ranch Saturday night, jokes at the vice president's expense have dominated late-night television, radio talk shows, left-leaning blogs and other parts of the Internet.

It has also spurred dozens of cartoons, a Dick Cheney shooting game, and clips from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" passed around the Web.

Mr. Whittington suffered a mild heart attack yesterday when one of the pellets traveled to his heart, but he was in stable condition and expected to recover, according to doctors at his Corpus Christi hospital. If the Texas lawyer's condition does not turn grave, the jokes are likely to keep coming, said Daniel Kurtzman, political humor editor for About.com.

Late night comics "will probably lay off a bit. They're a little more accountable to things like taste when it comes to their audience and advertisers," said Mr. Kurtzman, a former political correspondent who has edited politicalhumor.about.com for six years.

"The Internet is a free-for-all marketplace, full of irreverent partisans, and they'll continue to exploit this for all its worth," he said.

The incident recalls Vice President Dan Quayle misspelling "potato" for a New Jersey sixth-grader in 1992 and President Jimmy Carter hitting an aggressive rabbit with a canoe paddle in 1979. Both incidents played into existing public images of the men and exploded into national jokes.

The alchemy that changed this weekend's possibly serious incident into late-night jokes has a lot to do with the perception of Mr. Cheney as an unflappable tough guy with egg on his face.

"He's the one guy who, among modern vice presidents, is so aloof and so remote from ever making public statements and being in the public eye, even in a functionary capacity," said Gerald Shuster, a professor of political communication and presidential rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh.

"It's layered with ironies that are too good to ignore," Mr. Kurtzman said. "You've got a gun-wielding vice president who embodies shoot first, ask questions later. Mistaking a lawyer for a quail. ... You can't make this stuff up."

Even Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, a Republican and brother of the president, joked about the incident at a lunch yesterday. After placing a bright orange sticker on his chest he said, "I'm a little concerned that Dick Cheney is going to walk in."