SNL goes poignant
November 13, 2016 11:16 AM   Subscribe

Rather than easy Trump impressions/jokes, Saturday Night Live went with a stunning cold open and captured/addressed a lot of sadness and angst in three minutes.

Kate McKinnon has been doing Hillary Clinton impressions in the lead-up to the US election, along with Alec Baldwin as Trump.

In the wake of Trump's victory and Leonard Cohen's death this week (prev obit thread), McKinnon as Hillary demonstrated considerable talent playing Cohen's "Hallelujah" solo.

Host Dave Chappelle also delivered a monologue that was funny, poignant, conciliatory and hopefully cathartic.
posted by raider (79 comments total) 44 users marked this as a favorite
 
I thought it was a particularly appropriate thing for them to do, and extremely well done.
posted by MikeWarot at 11:18 AM on November 13, 2016 [16 favorites]


I saw it last night and went speechless at Kate McKinnon's song.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 11:21 AM on November 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


It's pretty cool that they're so dedicated to being balanced - I mean, they gave Donald Trump the place of honor by letting him be host before the election, and now they're doing a sweet swan song for Hillary after the election. In these divisive times, I'm glad they're going the distance to bring people together under President Trump.
posted by koeselitz at 11:24 AM on November 13, 2016 [47 favorites]


Yea, this was a great episode, and Kate McKinnon made me cry.

A Tribe Called Quest was great, and did not hide what's going on with their song We the People:

We don't believe you 'cause we the people
Are still here in the rear, ayo, we don't need you
You in the killing-off-good-young-nigga mood
When we get hungry we eat the same fucking food
[...]
All you Black folks, you must go
All you Mexicans, you must go
And all you poor folks, you must go
Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways
So all you bad folks, you must go

I will say, Weekend Update has been doing this 'both of them are terrible' schtick throughout this election, and I say fuck that noise. SNL also had Trump be a host last year, let's be very aware of how the media normalized this bigot, and how they will continue to normalize him.
posted by airish at 11:30 AM on November 13, 2016 [47 favorites]


(Still, much love to Dave Chappelle, who is great to see no matter the circumstances. I just don't think we should let SNL and Jimmy Fallon off so lightly.)
posted by koeselitz at 11:31 AM on November 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


"Why do we have to say that? Why do we have to say that black lives matter? Now, I admit that's not the best slogan, but McDonald's already took 'You Deserve A Break Today.' And I guess it's kinda catchy 'cause everyone else is biting it. Even the police bite it. 'Blue Lives Matter!' What, was you born a police? That is not a blue life, that's a blue suit! If you don't like it, take that suit off. Find a new job. 'Cause I'm gonna tell you right now: if I could quit being black today, I'd be out the game."
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 11:32 AM on November 13, 2016 [89 favorites]


It's easy to miss but note McKinnon's wink at 1:10 of the song. The woman is magic.
posted by raider at 11:37 AM on November 13, 2016 [18 favorites]


Weekend Update has been doing this 'both of them are terrible' schtick throughout this election, and I say fuck that noise.

And even McKinnon's earlier election bits, while clearly affectionate, were largely about how unrelatable and awkward and unlikeable Clinton is. Lovely as it was, SNL really hadn't earned doing an open like that. It's like some lovely elegy of Clinton's candidacy from the Times.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:39 AM on November 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


I watched this and sobbed. I thought it was perfect. I don't know what else they could have done to show their grief.
posted by samthemander at 11:43 AM on November 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


Maybe Alec Baldwin could have sung the Horst Wessel Lied next.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:45 AM on November 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


I have to say I'm finding the ever growing idolization of comedic takes on politics to be deeply troubling. SNL links appear everywhere on the night of the show and after and are treated as meaningful political involvement and commentary as they are shared, despite that meaning often being unpacked more in terms of laughs and talent than coherency as a political message or in how it affects the audience. The same is true of all the talk show humor/commentary that is so frequently linked to and even shown on regular newscasts in highlighted clips. Sure, there is occasionally some attempts to look at the clips or skits in more depth from the outside, and, sure, there are surely times a comedic approach might hit all the right notes or inspire action, but there are also times they likely inspire inaction and hit the wrong notes and alienate others in their approach.

I'm not suggesting a ban on the shows, censorship, or really anything other than suggesting it is worrying to see how much importance comedy shows have gained in political discourse and how little we might understand or care about what that phenomenon means beyond entertainment as positive value.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:51 AM on November 13, 2016 [34 favorites]


And I should add I say that having greatly enjoyed some of these same shows myself, Samantha Bee in particular, but that only makes me want to examine the thinking on this all the more.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:55 AM on November 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Chappelle's bit was very smart, but the underlying class myopia and gender myopia really stung in light of this election.
posted by effluvia at 11:55 AM on November 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Did not John Oliver say something to the effect that when the politica is a joke it's up to the jokers to make it matter again?
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 11:56 AM on November 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


The history of politics and comedy is centuries-old, so it's not like SNL has done anything new or wrong. I actually thought the cold-open was good, and the monologue much more depressing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:59 AM on November 13, 2016


I thought I was done crying but apparently I'm not.

I get what people are saying about SNL, but I have to say, as a progressive who was a reluctant and then enthusiastic Clinton supporter: I half-joke that McKinnon's portrayal played at least a small part in my growing affection for Clinton.
posted by lunasol at 12:03 PM on November 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


The history of politics and comedy is centuries-old, so it's not like SNL has done anything new or wrong. I actually thought the cold-open was good, and the monologue much more depressing.

Of course. The change is, potentially, in the space comedy takes up in the national dialogue and how we react to it and spur it on by sharing both the clips themselves as well as our own sick burns and hot takes, often, seemingly, instead of something more substantive. The amount of space entertainment media holds in our political discourse is the worry, not that comedy has no place at all in our dialogues.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:13 PM on November 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Chappelle's bit was very smart, but the underlying class myopia and gender myopia really stung in light of this election.

Can you elaborate ? Because I thought his monologue, besides the racism of Trump, also touched upon the class and gender problems of a Trump presidency.
posted by Pendragon at 12:17 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Comedy is filling the void left by the shrinking tradition of principled reporting and hosting on tv.

Comedy reporting is comedy that takes news seriously. For day to day life I vastly prefer that to what we have, which is news that takes entertainment seriously. The replacing of news with entertainment-news is what I'd point to as the source of problems, not the rise of comedy.
posted by tychotesla at 12:31 PM on November 13, 2016 [47 favorites]


Comedy reporting is comedy that takes news seriously. For day to day life I vastly prefer that to what we have, which is news that takes entertainment seriously. The replacing of news with entertainment-news is what I'd point to as the thing to worry about.

Well said. I was conflating the two things as being part of the same dynamic, but spelling it out like that is much better.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:35 PM on November 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


The amount of space entertainment media holds in our political discourse is the worry

cleon complains about aristophanes
posted by poffin boffin at 12:39 PM on November 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


I'm not suggesting a ban on the shows, censorship, or really anything other than suggesting it is worrying to see how much importance comedy shows have gained in political discourse and how little we might understand or care about what that phenomenon means beyond entertainment as positive value.

This is something that really pissed me off the days after the election. Everyone was saying how awful and unexpected this was, and people should be ashamed etc, but nobody actually went out and said "maybe if in 2015 we ignored him, he might have gotten bored and went away, particularly if he'd to pay for airtime like the others in the clown car instead of being the talk of TV Town 24/7", other than Seth Meyers (I think, I only watch those when I'm trying to fall asleep watching YouTube) who said something in the lines of being sorry of spending so much time on Trump.
Of course, late night comedy shows are on the tail end of that, but they were still complicit in spreading his message (well, "message") when it was perfectly justifiable to ignore it, and it pisses me off seeing them trying to wash their hands out of this because they were good Dem troopers. Fallon deserves every shit he god for playing his puppy dog routine with Trump, but almost everyone else was complicit is normalizing Trump's ideas by repeating them as often as possible. If David Duke tried to pull the exact same thing, he'd be ignored most of the time. But Trump brought ratings/views/pagehits, and everyone had become incredibly addicted to what he did or say.
Turns out, like every other addiction, it's bad for you.


Also, Rock and Chappelle should do more things together.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:40 PM on November 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


I heard "Chappelle and Tribe on SNL!" and turned it on like oh boy oh boy oh boy and got a faceful of my beloved Kate playing Hillary and doing most aching song ever by Cohen who we just lost and regardless of SNL's politics (I gave up on them years ago) that was a hell of a brutal bait-and-switch

I was an ardent fan of only ever watching comedy news during the Stewart/Colbert heydays. Pundits and columnists wrung their hands about my generation doing that, and I always thought fuck them, have they seen the laughable shit the Bush administration is telling us? It was the only way to consume the news, with a hefty dose of sarcasm. Hunter S. Thompson knew it. (Written news always being preferable to televised news anyway, given the pressures on TV to use soundbites and compete with entertainment content.) Colbert and Stewart were all about calling out cant.

Somehow in this last cycle we've finally lost that grip on comedy news. Trevor Noah is good in his own way, with his international perspective, but his Obama-like dignity gets in his way. He's unable to pull the rat-terrier-like grip Stewart had when it came to asking people hard questions.

Colbert has been utterly depressing to watch over the last few months. The inevitability of the "that guy is orange!" nod in every opening monologue looked to be as depressing to Colbert as it was to us. It only served to give Trump more airtime. Colbert's election night thing was hard to watch, him and Jeff Goldblum just going full-on sad clown.

John Oliver's show is still a good delivery vehicle for the nuances of complicated issues. Chappelle was good to have back last night, but he looks like a man who has been sick for a while and is being careful with himself. He's a man of great awareness, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity who has struggled with the impact of his knife-edge work before; when it gets read one way by people who are woke, and another by ignorants and racists, it hurts him. We need him around, but I pray he doesn't burn out. Last night he was moving with more gravitas than he used to. This might be a healthy transformation for him, and it will be interesting to see what comedy comes of it (or whether he aims for more serious stuff).

On the whole, it feels like political comedy is dead. For now. What arises to take its place remains to be seen. I don't think I could go back to watching straight news; the self-importance of the anchors and their willful ignorance of the kind of glaring contradictions the Daily Show used to be good at calling out are too obnoxious to watch. The really good-quality news is not something you can watch at the end of the day, because it's too depressing. Anyway we need something else, something that jams filter bubbles together so we actually talk to each other. And given that media monopoly doesn't just force us to watch three networks anymore, I don't know how we achieve that.
posted by gusandrews at 12:41 PM on November 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


Hunter S. Thompson knew it.

"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."

-HST
posted by Splunge at 1:01 PM on November 13, 2016 [20 favorites]


Yeah. Made me cry.
posted by latkes at 1:19 PM on November 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I said this before: the media bought lock, stock, and whole-fucking-barrel the assumption that Clinton is a corrupt, power-hungry, unrelatable, inauthentic ladder-climber, and they've done it for so long they've stopped questioning whether it was ever true. McKinnon may claim she's a Clinton fan, but she perpetuated that image and SNL assisted the normalization of Trump by letting him host and treating him with the softest of kid gloves. I've no patience for this post-election mourning and hand-wringing by the very people who gleefully undercut her and propped the narrative that she and Trump were equally terrible.

I am a fan of political satire--but satire based in cowardice and laziness gets no respect from me.

Fuck SNL. Fuck Fallon. Fuck CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Fox, the NYT, and all those goddamn outlets who based their election coverage in "common wisdom" in lieu of facts. Fuck these people who make every goddamn effort to convince the populace that Chosen Outlet X is THE best source for news, or commentary, or satire. Because when the public respond accordingly, trusts that trash, and puts a fascist in office their response is to bemoan the state of the country and wonder what went wrong. I am done with this hypocrisy.
posted by Anonymous at 1:23 PM on November 13, 2016


They'll have my sympathy and appreciation when they spent a half-minute considering how their pursuit of the cheap laugh and bottom dollar shaped our country into what it is today.
posted by Anonymous at 1:24 PM on November 13, 2016


I have to say I'm finding the ever growing idolization of comedic takes on politics to be deeply troubling...

In these latter days of cable news, Google news, Netflix and twitter, there is very little left in the way of around the water cooler style shared experience. Everyone drinks their own flavor anymore.
posted by y2karl at 1:27 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Fuck SNL, fuck Jimmy Fallon, and fuck NBC Universal forever. They own a special little piece of this nightmare, and I'll never forgive them for it.
posted by saladin at 1:29 PM on November 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


Mark Russell is still alive. The only thing to add is the old adage of "There is more truth said in jest" for the importance of satire and lesser comedic forms(like SNL). You pays your money and you takes your chances in a constitutional representative republic.
posted by Donkey_Unicorn at 1:37 PM on November 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


The amount of space entertainment media holds in our political discourse is the worry

It's almost like we're amusing ourselves to death.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:39 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


This post is about SNL being a cultural touchstone and how they addressed both the election and Leonard Cohen's death.

Rant away, folks. March and protest after the horse has left the barn. Do what you gotta do.

But as noted above, there is no shortage of other places to vent that would be more specific to your concerns.
posted by raider at 1:43 PM on November 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Chappelle's bit was very smart, but the underlying class myopia and gender myopia really stung in light of this election.

Can you elaborate ? Because I thought his monologue, besides the racism of Trump, also touched upon the class and gender problems of a Trump presidency.


His "joke" about sexually assaulting the housekeeping staff at the Trump Plaza may have been an attempt at touching on the gender problems of a Trump presidency, but it came off as crassly punching down at best and reveling in having permission to abuse women who are poorer and less famous than him at worst. In other words, the joke was at the expense of assault victims, not perpetrators.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 1:53 PM on November 13, 2016 [16 favorites]


I agree that the late night shows in the end likely did more harm than good.

But goddamn. Kate McKinnon? I will love her forever.
posted by gwint at 1:57 PM on November 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Echoing MarinX's remarks on the housekeeping staff, and the overarching message to the poor African Americans in his circle (there's only room for four in the balloon), (Obama, don't take my income), subtext was, "I've got mine, I don't care what happens to others" sort of voting that got us The Pretender.
posted by effluvia at 2:05 PM on November 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


You don't get that the "housekeeping/handful of pussy" joke was a laser-scoped direct shot at Trump?
posted by raider at 2:24 PM on November 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


This post is about SNL being a cultural touchstone and how they addressed both the election and Leonard Cohen's death.

And if it was not clear from my comment, I think they did an inadequate job in the larger context of their performance during the election.
posted by Anonymous at 2:25 PM on November 13, 2016


I'm trying to imagine going back in time a few years and trying to explain the context of this clip to past-me. I don't think I'd have an easy time doing so, and I'm not sure I would be able to explain why I'm crying.


As a completely selfish aside, I had wanted to find a way to spend less time online, and now I'm finding that I really don't want to read about anything happening to anyone. People are either going to have horrible things happen to them that I'm powerless to stop, or they're horrible people who are perfectly fine, if not actively bringing about these horrible things, and I don't want to have to pretend to be civil to them.

I know I'm going to get dressed, go outside, and interact with other people again, and that rolling over and giving up just makes it easier for Trump and his ilk to demolish civil society, but I'm not ready to get out of bed just yet, and I'm finding out that I'm not actually that good a person.

posted by bibliowench at 2:36 PM on November 13, 2016 [14 favorites]


You don't get that the "housekeeping/handful of pussy" joke was a laser-scoped direct shot at Trump?

I understand that it was a reference to Trump, but I don't think it was a shot at Trump and the distinction is important. Chappelle's comment was a laugh along with the people who think that Trumps comments were just "locker room talk" and "boys will be boys." Like I said before, it came across like Chappelle was reveling in a fantasy about committing assault, not condemning it.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 2:49 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Have to strongly disagree, martinX's bellbottoms. The joke was both a shot at Trump as well as a shot at all of us; "boss says it's okay" and that boss was just elected. By us. To be the boss of fuckin' everything.

Chappelle's jokes are rarely merely jokes, and it's the foundation of his genius.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 3:10 PM on November 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


MartinX, I posted this thread so as much as I'd love to engage in this conversation I need to step back. I respectfully disagree. Best to you and all.
posted by raider at 3:10 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Democratic Party deserved the elimination of the Voting Rights Act, subsequent targeted voter suppression, and people taking to the streets to protest the election results?!?

Good grief. Back to the topic at hand. I was unaware McKinnon could play the piano, and her rendition of this song made me tear up.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 3:23 PM on November 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Yeah who knew McKinnon can do everything ?
posted by janey47 at 3:39 PM on November 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


Lorne Michaels: So . . . for the cold opening . . . lets have a children's choir sing Hallelujah as a tribute to Leonard Cohen
Vanessa Bayer: Good idea. But. . umm. . .ah. . . maybe we should remove the the verse that's explicitly about fucking?
Dave Chappelle: [crazy white people look]
Lorne Michaels: Hmmm. . .well, the songs repeats "Hallelujah" over and over, and people love the song so they don't usually notice. . . . but yeah, maybe we should remove that verse
Dave Chappelle: [crazy white people look]
Colin Jost: Isn't the whole song about fucking?
Dave Chappelle: [crazy white people look]
Lorne Michaels: Okay. Scrap the children. And find me someone to sing the song who has been fucked.
posted by sockpup at 3:53 PM on November 13, 2016 [17 favorites]


On the whole, it feels like political comedy is dead. For now.

Are you crazy? It will be a golden age for political comedy, we'll need it more than ever! I heard people on Twitter actually blaming John Oliver for Trump. Like a comedian could have that much power.

Rather the opposite. Stewart and Oliver have long said they are only comedians, their responsibility is to the joke. Oliver, if anything, has recognized the problems with this and tried to move beyond, and moved his show towards not just recognizing hypocrisy but actually looking deeper into substantive issues, and how they could be resolved. But he would be the first to say (and I expect tonight we will hear him say something like it): It's fine to laugh. But if that's all you do, then you are a fool.

Don't just laugh, but remember! If it's YOUR Congressperson who's been mentioned in a piece, then call. Change you vote. Talk to your friends! Don't just pass the link to people who agree with you, pass it to those who don't. Break out of your echo chamber into others. Make cracks in the cement. They might only be cracks, but that's how the light water/ice/plant roots get in that cause the damage.

And realize that it NEVER ENDS. Democracy is not a system of government where you can ever relax and say "Okay it's good enough now."
posted by JHarris at 4:17 PM on November 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


You don't get that the "housekeeping/handful of pussy" joke was a laser-scoped direct shot at Trump?

In a world where men have already started saying this before or after assaulting women, his aim needs work. I adore Chappelle on race, but his gender work has always been much weaker and this is an example of that.

Practically speaking "the boss" has always said sexual assault and rape were ok when he or his friends were the one doing it. This isn't new for women, or news. It is depressing and demoralizing that so many people decided him saying it outright wasn't actually that bad a thing, and then so many people dismissed the violence and aggression of sexual assault. It's depressing and demoralizing that it's become a punch line for men to casually say about the women around them and under their influence, and that even men "on our side" find it funny. It's depressing and demoralizing that a number of those men will decide this is license to sexually assault strangers when they might have refrained, because now they have validation that women's bodies do belong to whatever man is closest and not to her.

What it isn't is a condemnation. The "maids" are objects for the joke, not subjects whose right to bodily autonomy is respected even in the abstract. The subject of the joke is Chappelle, temporarily and gleefully aligning himself with Trump over the right to sexually assault employees simply because they exist.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:21 PM on November 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Deoridhe, usually I enthusiastically second (or, generally, seventeenth at that point in the discussion) your incisive reads on so many things, but I just did not have the same interpretation in this instance. I really understood this as Chappelle vilifying such behavior, not celebrating it.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 4:37 PM on November 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


And to be clear, I don't disagree with you on the shortcomings in his earlier work with respect to gender, but he's been out of the national public eye for a good while and this particular bit did not offend me as some of his older stuff has.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 4:45 PM on November 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I assume Alec Baldwin is done with playing Trump, so I suggest that from now on whenever a sketch has a situation that would call for Trump, just insert Beck Bennett's Putin instead.
posted by ckape at 5:22 PM on November 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


I thought this cold open was beautiful. It was a tribute to HRC and the end of the SNL character and to Leonard Cohen and a way to bring forward the cast and crew's grief. But I also thought it was a reminder of k.d. lang singing this song in her white suit at the Vancouver Olympics - a move that really allowed Canada to showcase an artist who hadn't caved to mainstream rules about gender and orientation, as well as the equal marriage laws. And then McKinnon is singing a song about royal succession written by a Jewish beatnik poet from Montreal. I thought that was sort of a nod to tell us that people have worked for change for years and that we must continue on. Maybe the k.d. piece is just a coincidence, but that's one of the most beautiful versions of the song I've ever heard, so it stood out for me.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 5:59 PM on November 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


I was just blown away by the cold open. I didn't want to see Trump yet again, I didn't know how they'd do anything funny this week. But Kate as Hillary singing that song, followed by that line...wow. I was verklempt.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:50 PM on November 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


It all felt overwhelmingly elegiac to me, despite the effort at a hopeful coda. Overwhelmingly elegiac and trampled. As Leonard Cohen himself wrote, "Listen to the mind of God/Don’t listen to me."
posted by blucevalo at 6:58 PM on November 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


two things:

1.entertainers are renown for their self-hate and neediness ( yes the people you get your "news" from on tv are entertainers, sorry to finally be the one to break that to you). They saw Trump as one of their own. Having him run for president was no different than an actor getting nominated as best director, no matter how abject their politics, they are still silently rooting for him, because his success reflects well on them (see Mel Gibson).

2. Chappelle hit on the one thing that has kept me away from cable news for the last 15 years. That he was a millionaire and that part of him was upset with the election of Obama because it meant less money in his pocket. I always felt that I could never trust any "news' I received from a millionaire because no matter who got elected they were going to be ok. Rachel Maddow is worth 20 million, think about that, one wrong word an she's out the door like Keith Olbermann, that's a pretty strong leash and a guarantee that the 1% always have a kindred spirit doling out the information.
posted by any major dude at 7:20 PM on November 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Am I the only one who thought of this: Charlie Rich dedicates "I Feel Like Going Home" to Richard Nixon (from Greil Marcus' Mystery Train):
And so for Nixon, just then slipping over the line to the point where his whole existence would become a national joke, Rich sang,

I tried and I failed
And I feel like going home


The words stayed in my mind throughout the strange, difficult song; they didn't change the president, or the country, or the world, but they changed how a few of us who were there to listen understood those things. They cut through everything I believe to uncover a compassion that I never, never wanted to feel.
posted by e-man at 8:57 PM on November 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Chappelle hit on the one thing that has kept me away from cable news for the last 15 years. That he was a millionaire and that part of him was upset with the election of Obama because it meant less money in his pocket.

I've been thinking about this. I'm starting to consider that maybe people don't have money so much but are kind of possessed by it. The money speaks through you, and it has alien motives.
posted by JHarris at 9:18 PM on November 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


My mom told me about this today and was like do you know who that girl is that pretends to be Hillary on SNL and I was like do you mean Kate McKinnon my future wife and my mom was like yes good propose asap she sang Hallelujah on the show and I cried so I want her as my daughter in law immediately

Watching this was a very good way to start the morning is what I'm saying I guess

(But no, I have not forgiven SNL for letting He Who Must Not Be Named host, because they need to take responsibility for their fair share of the shit show they helped create)
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:55 PM on November 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


One way for SNL to partially atone for their role in normalizing Trump would be to implement my idea of never having any cast members portray him in sketches, but to instead have him represented as an off-screen character that speaks to other characters only in muted sad trombone sounds, a-la Peanuts.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:20 PM on November 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


I've watched this video like eight times today. ❤️
posted by bendy at 1:54 AM on November 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nope. No forgiveness. Hilarious laugh hour with il Duce, that is the sum total of their significance.
posted by Puddle at 2:40 AM on November 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think in the list of factors that allowed Trump to become president, SNL probably ranks around 700th.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 6:55 AM on November 14, 2016 [17 favorites]


This once was a quite moving song,
but Zack Snyder did it great wrong.
Keep reading for my saddened explanation.

In Watchmen, there's a certain scene,
you probably know the one I mean,
and I can't help but think "ejaculation."
posted by jordemort at 9:12 AM on November 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


It was already about ejaculation.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:16 AM on November 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


I absolutely hate this song. But I couldn't stop watching her and when she said at the end "I haven't given up and neither should you," I pretty much started sobbing.

I haven't given up and neither should you.
posted by merelyglib at 9:17 AM on November 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


Alvy Ampersand: Fair enough, I guess having the scene from that movie stuck in my head just kind of drained all the poetry out of it for me.
posted by jordemort at 9:24 AM on November 14, 2016


It was already about draining all the poetry out.





I'll stop now.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:02 AM on November 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


That was about as inspirational and moving as any bad cover of Hallelujah and as meaningful as all the inspiring quotes from Harry Fucking Potter a certain breed of liberal has taken to Tweet as an alternative to actually doing something.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:07 PM on November 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


I find it offensive SNL is treated with such kid gloves. They normalized Trump's candidacy by having him on. I stopped watching decades ago because of their misogyny (in almost every sketch), but this is beyond the pale. Fuck SNL.
posted by agregoli at 1:33 PM on November 14, 2016


I will say this about SNL: Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks was the best comedic political commentary of the year. Black and white people in the working class have more in common, even culturally, than most people realize. They could, in theory, be political allies. Black Jeopardy nailed why they weren't in 2016. For liberals, anti-racism is at the core of the platform, as it should be. It is part of the deal. For many in the "white working class", anti-racism does not reconcile with "making America great again".
posted by AceRock at 2:23 PM on November 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


Sure, SNL are a bunch of collusionists, and that show hasn't been funny since the 70s, when it was, in fact, pretty offensive. Having said that, I've taken a vow since Trump:

I will not expend one ounce of energy critisizing people who are doing any kind of cultural, activist, or other work against Trump. However poorly analyzed, unless that 'work' is itself actively causing harm, I will not criticize it. I will applaud it, take heart from it, or if I can't find it in myself to do either, I'll move on.

Every time I want to roll my eyes at a mediocre stab at Trump, I vow to put that eye-rolling energy into actually doing something myself. Attend a protest, write a senator, make my own art against Trump, ask a neighborhood mosque how I can support them, stand up for my trans friends, talk to my family and coworkers, in the most persuasive ways I can muster, and when the time comes, stand up in more militant or risky ways as the moment demands.

There is a place for criticism, but in my eyes, only if followed by better, more well reasoned action.
posted by latkes at 4:05 PM on November 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


That he was a millionaire and that part of him was upset with the election of Obama because it meant less money in his pocket.

He's a comedian. His job is to present ridiculous scenarios. You have no way of knowing what Dave Chappelle does with his money or how he feels about taxes.
posted by bendy at 12:26 AM on November 15, 2016


He's a comedian. His job is to present ridiculous scenarios. You have no way of knowing what Dave Chappelle does with his money or how he feels about taxes.

He's an honest performer and he was being honest about a feeling I'm sure he wasn't very proud of having. I think rich pricks like Jack Welch (former owner of NBC) figured out a long time ago that it's a lot easier to control the media if you pay individuals 100x the amount they could garner at any other job. That was the way he controlled suck ups like Tim Russert. I remember saying back in the early 2000's that Tim Russert couldn't even run a successful blog if he got fired from NBC. This model was replicated over and over for cable news. You'll rarely find anyone of influence in the news business that isn't getting woefully overpaid. Ask yourself why that is?
posted by any major dude at 7:10 AM on November 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


My take on the Chappelle bit is that it wasn't very strong and probably put together at the last minute if he too was figuring Clinton was going to win. His line about grabbing a handful of pussy because the boss says its okay is literally what teachers have been reporting grade school children saying, so not much zing in that zinger.

His joke about not seeing that many white people upset since OJ got off makes little sense as he's comparing a Clinton loss to the OJ verdict on their effect on white people. There really isn't a good way to read that where the joke isn't problematic. Is he suggesting that Clinton's loss is only upsetting to white people, and ignoring Trump's bigotry? If he's suggesting racism for the reaction to the OJ verdict, first, that's minimizing the actual crime against a woman for a joke, but even were it not, how is the response to Clinton losing a match for the racist response to OJ's verdict, if that is the suggestion? If it isn't suggesting racism as an issue and is instead focused on the celebrity angle, where Trump victory equals OJ victory due to fame, which would sorta go with the rest of his rich guy spiel, then he's downplaying race as a factor, which doesn't really work, and making a banal observation on top of that by pointing out celebrities get special treatment as if that's an impressive observation.

At best, I might suppose that the joke was originally going to be about seeing the faces of Trump supporters after their might have been loss, and he just swapped it because the OJ line zinged, but its a pretty lame way to call out white people when there are many better targets about. That seemed true for a number of his jokes, punchlines based on attitude connected to the history of racism, but without connection to any clear point of view, relying just on saying something the audience reads as pointed due to it being about race.

His blue lives bit was better, but the end note on Chappelle being willing to switch to white if he could gave it an oddly self erasing tone, which is not a criticism of the belief, but something that seemed to be affecting his whole routine, as if he isn't comfortable with it or being out there or the state of affairs or something. His conciliatory note at the end about giving Trump a chance too had this same sort of uncertainty and distance from things, tied perhaps to his preoccupation with celebrity, but not especially coherent or politically or socially meaningful as far as I'm concerned, other than it simply being Chappelle out there saying it and seeming a bit disconcerted.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:07 AM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Blue Lives Matter bit has been around on social media for maybe a year. It's an excellent take on the issue, but he straight up stole it.

Anyway, I was really disappointed he didn't tear into Trump, but then again this is NBC and they'll probably have him host again before the inauguration.
posted by AFABulous at 10:34 AM on November 15, 2016


I'm not going to do a point by point defense of Chappelle's bit, mainly because he's one of the greatest alive and for some reason people tend to approach his routines as racial discourse first and comedy second, as opposed to the other way around. That said:

That he was a millionaire and that part of him was upset with the election of Obama because it meant less money in his pocket.

Dave Chappelle is notorious for making decisions that cost him literally tens of millions of dollars, so I wouldn't take his selfish act-out as much more than a joke.
posted by Think_Long at 1:08 PM on November 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, I didn't find the routine particularly funny in large part because a lot of the jokes didn't connect much to anything and he seemed a bit off kilter.

As to approaching his or anyone's routines as racial discourse, that's what they are, just because something's cast as a joke, doesn't make it less about whatever the subject being joked about is, in this case, race. And given Chappelle took a sabbatical from comedy in large part because he found his routines to be taken in ways he didn't intend around race, that seems to be a concern of his also. Beyond that, with the constant reference to SNL's and other comedy news shows in political discussion, it seems useful to look at what's actually being said since these routines make up a significant part of how people are thinking about the elections, race, and other culturally meaningful subject matter.

That said, I thought his Obama joke was a solid one. He framed it around his money, but the clear suggestion to me was that if he had made it under Bush or one of the other white presidents, he would have kept it because they didn't ask anything from anyone other than, essentially, greed, but since he came into a good deal of money right when Obama came into office, he was being asked to give some of it up for the good of all, because that's the better way to be, so the joke is over him getting caught between the white ideal and the black or Obama ideal, so he couldn't think of just himself, though of course that would have been easier to do. Simple set up, good twist and nice subtext. That's the sort of thing I was expecting more of really, but didn't get it for whatever reason. Maybe it was, as I guessed, that he had to change a planned routine, or maybe it just was an off night or something else. Who knows?
posted by gusottertrout at 1:49 PM on November 15, 2016



Dave Chappelle is notorious for making decisions that cost him literally tens of millions of dollars, so I wouldn't take his selfish act-out as much more than a joke.


There's no joke there, he's offering you insight. Of course he's rather have a black democratic president but even he cannot avoid the insidious "me first, fuck the rest" predilection that has pervaded the American voting public since that bastard Reagan asked "are you better off now than four years ago" as if any meaningful or lasting change can happen to a life from a four year political cycle.
posted by any major dude at 5:14 AM on November 16, 2016


Given the rabid, reliable SNL hate on the Blue, I'm just surprised raider went to the trouble to make the post.
posted by uberchet at 7:31 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Given the rabid, reliable SNL hate on the Blue, I'm just surprised raider went to the trouble to make the post"

The secret is, not giving a fuck.
posted by raider at 3:22 PM on November 22, 2016


But I am pleased with the discourse it provoked. Thanks, all.
posted by raider at 3:23 PM on November 22, 2016


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