DAVID MARCUS: A comedy legend trashes his rep for cheap Democrat propaganda.
Back on Oct. 1, [Saturday Night Live creator/producer Lorne] Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter that neither Harris nor her opponent Donald Trump would appear on the show, a statement which turned out to have all the honesty of Jon Lovitz saying, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Suddenly, with three days left before the election, Michaels decided that his comedy show, one of the few things all Americans still share, would become a full-blown arm of the Harris campaign.
Live from New York….It’s Democrat Propaganda!
I’d be very curious to know exactly how this happened. Did Michaels have a change of heart and reach out to Harris? Or, as seems more likely, did a panicked Harris campaign beg for her star turn on the weekly broadcast?
This is the same Kamala Harris who couldn’t be bothered to attend the Al Smith dinner at the invitation of Cardinal Timothy Dolan because her schedule was too tight. Suddenly, 72 hours before the election, she cancels a rally in Michigan to appear live at the home of Father Guido Sarducci?
Michaels broke a real and serious trust here, part of what makes comedy as social commentary work. It’s something SNL has often strived at: fairness and the idea that all sides are open to ridicule. Such a blatant display of partisanship destroys that.
This is why woke comedy doesn’t work. In the place of the edgy and honest skewering of society, it instead is a laundry list of pseudo-religious shibboleths wearing a shabby comic costume.
The audience isn’t laughing at the joke, but at the stupidity of those they disagree with.
It is also worth noting that SNL has produced some of the most notable conservatives in Hollywood, including Dennis Miller, Rob Schneider, and Victoria Jackson.
None of whom publicly broadcast they were conservatives until long after they left the show, as is the case with most open conservatives working in Hollywood who wait until their careers are well established before announcing they lean anywhere to the right of Gorbachev.
And while its obvious whom Lorne was endorsing in this election, Kamala could have done Rogan as well, and likely cost Trump his endorsement in the process.
But as Roger Simon writes, celebrities in general were the “Big Losers of Election 2024:” “Am I the only one who has had enough of so-called ‘celebrities’ to last a lifetime or six? I have begun to think of them as a form of pollution. We are constantly bombarded with their views on everything that are almost never of the slightest depth or value.”
But Hollywood is the Democrats’ base in the 21st century, and it’s important for politicians to service their constituents, which sadly means we will likely be seeing their capped teeth and botoxed faces in campaign ads for years to come.
Related: Christian Toto on: Nixon v. Harris: A Tale of Two Pop Culture Close-ups. Richard Nixon’s iconic Laugh-In appearance trumps Kamala’s SNL stumble.