Happy 50th Birthday, SNL!

Everybody’s favorite sketch comedy show run by a beloved monster began its 50th season on Saturday, in a star-studded episode featuring Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, Dana Carvey as Joe Biden, and Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff. I’ll admit I was lightly surprised to see James Austin Johnson tapped for Donald Trump, as Lorne Michaels seemed to suggest in a September 19th Hollywood Reporter interview that he might go in a different direction this season: 

Will James Austin Johnson continue playing Trump or do you welcome Alec Baldwin back?

MICHAELS I think James will be there, but I don’t want to get into what I’m doing.

So, you’re not going to tell me who you’ve got playing J.D. Vance?

MICHAELS No, but I think we have the people to play [the candidates] and it should be fun. And Trump has morphed. James, who I think is brilliant, played Trump as the sort of diminished Trump. The guy at the back of the hardware store holding court, and that played because it felt relevant. But we are going to have to reinvent it again because, well, you saw the debate. One of the great parts of show business is that you can’t come back with the same show. So, all of these characters have to be reexamined, and if it makes sense and feels relevant, you know you’re on the right track. But if it feels like you’re talking to the audience and want to be supported because your values are the same as their values, you really shouldn’t be in comedy. 

Unless I’m woefully misreading, Michaels’ position appears to that Trump offered a strong performance in the last debate, and that Austin Johnson’s impression is not suited to a Trump who’s back on the rise. I also take that last line to mean that Michaels considers it artistically unsound to stick with a Trump impression that’s too, well, not nice to the man himself: SNL’s job is not to flatter Democrats, but to make good comedy. (True enough, but I’m still waiting for it to do the latter.) 

And yet there was Austin Johnson back in his Trump getup; if Michaels had other plans, they haven’t yet come to fruition. Interestingly, attendees of the far-right comedy festival Skankfest this weekend said on Reddit and Twitter that Shane Gillis claimed onstage that he was approached to play Trump this season, but turned it down. I haven’t watched the show in question yet—it’s only on pay-per-view, and, well, lol no—and we should take the claim with a grain of salt anyhow, given that Gillis isn’t exactly a figure of integrity. At the same time, I do find it notable that Michaels made a point of highlighting his admiration for Gillis in that THR interview. To wit:

How much more concerned are you about being politically correct today versus when you started? 

MICHAELS We had a bad time when I added Shane Gillis to the cast [in 2019]. He got beat up for things that he’d done years earlier [racist and homophobic jokes] and the overreaction to it was so stunning — and the velocity of it was 200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show. It became a scandal and I go, “No, no, he’s just starting and he’s really funny and you don’t know how we’re going to use him.” And when he came back to the show last year [to host], we saw, “Oh right, he’s really talented, and he would’ve been really good for us.” Now, his life turned out well without SNL, but my point with it is everything became way too serious. It was like a mania. And the velocity of cancellation — and lots of people deserved to not be liked — it just became not quite the Reign of Terror, but it was like you’re judging everybody on every position they have on every issue as opposed to, “Are they any good at the thing they do?” I do think that period is winding down and, I believe, the people who do awful things will still be punished.

Here’s what I’ll say about that: wow, really racist! Michaels’ take here is indistinguishable from what countless Gillis fans have been saying for five years now, in my inbox and elsewhere: that SNL only fired him because those rotten commie Chinese companies forced NBC to force Michaels’ hand. (I am loathe to even approach the argument on its merits, but: Lorne, my friend, if it were McDonalds or Volkswagen threatening to take their money elsewhere, do you think you may have given them more credit?) It’s also, obviously, revisionist: Gillis’s racism (and homophobia, and transphobia, and ableism…) was then and is now irrevocably wrapped up in his work. The question he raises is not “can we separate the artist from the art?” but “what do we do with talented craftsmen who use their art for rotten ends?” My feeling was and is that “don’t reward them a national platform” is an obvious bare minimum response, but I do agree with Michaels that this opinion is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Anyway, here's Gillis in a record-setting show at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena calling Justin Trudeau a homophobic slur:

Tim Dillon’s new Netflix special comes out tomorrow, so naturally he’s saying sensible, enlightened, and not transphobic things on his podcast: 

I'm not a Christian fundamentalist at all in any respect. And the reason I don't worry about it too much, I mean, everyone always worries about the rise of Christian fundamental—you know, a lot of my friends are liberals who go out in New York City and places like that, and they go, "Aren't you worried about the rise of Christian fundamentalism?" And I'm like, that would take such a sustained and prolonged effort. And the American people just aren't really zealots. That's not where they live. They don't live in that place of wanting to impose their worldview on other people. 

And that's why I think during the whole kerfuffle about the trans rights thing, it wasn't so much about respecting trans people, which we do. [Ed. note: Dillon routinely disparages trans people on his podcast, at times using the usual slur.] I think everyone, most people do, or they might not. There's a lot of people that hate people, but you're allowed to hate people from quietly in your own home. That powers this whole country. It powers our economy, people hating each other quietly in their own homes. But what the trans thing was about, was imposing a belief system on somebody else, which I have no interest in doing. And it takes a lot of work and effort. 

And that's why I'm not worried about America becoming a theocracy. It's just the American people don't really have—they don’t—that takes so much effort, to impose your will on other people. And usually when that tries to happen, whether it's the trans thing or when it's radical right wing, I mean, how many states have now put abortion in their constitution, even red states? So it always backfires when you moralize to people too much. It always backfires. It has to make sense. Five-year-olds getting gender reassignment surgery doesn't make sense. [Ed. note: five-year-olds are not getting gender reassignment surgery.] It's not a religious issue, it just doesn't make sense. A national abortion ban doesn't make sense. And the American people, I don't think really want either one. So it's going to be interesting to see how JD Vance handles that. And it'll be interesting to see if Tim Waltz has some type of fun story that didn't happen.

Yeah man, it sure would take a long, sustained effort for Christian fundamentalists to transform US government and policy. Good thing we don’t have to worry about them having been doing that for the last half-century!

Meanwhile on Flagrant, New York Comedy Festival headliner Akaash Singh and his cohosts explained during a subscriber Q+A that they don’t care much for Venezuelans:

Producer: This is from David from Williamsburg. He asked, what are your thoughts on illegal immigrants? 

Singh: What, are you trying to snitch on your own father, David?

Alexx Media: Which illegals?

Producer: The ones that look like me, but darker.

Media: I like the Mexicans.

Mark Gagnon: David, you want a real Patreon question?

Producer: Yeah, sure. 

Media: I like the Mexicans, but these Venezuelans, they’re a little—

Singh: That’s true, dude. They’re a tricky people. They’re a tricky people.

Producer: Are you guys familiar with the Venezuelan Williamsburg moped gang?

Media: They robbed somebody by my crib. But they caught the rinks […] If there was more, like, migrant Venezuelan women, I’d be more open to it. 

Gagnon: “Send us your needy. Send us your slutty,” right? That should be more the mantra. 

Media: Venezuelan women, bro? They a little different.

If you’re wondering how much straightforward racism pays these days, the answer is $73,000/month. 

I didn’t watch and have no interest in watching Ellen DeGeneres’ new Netflix special—allegedly her last, though somehow I suspect she'll be back—but I did enjoy reading Fran Hoepfner on it in The Atlantic: 

Throughout For Your Approval, DeGeneres sidesteps any real soul-searching about her reported behind-the-scenes conduct. Instead, she makes cracks about her attention deficit disorder (which, she says, explains her short attention span and curt personality), obsessive-compulsive disorder (that’s why she’s ornery about things being correct), and insufficient qualifications for being anyone’s boss. “I don’t think Ronald McDonald’s the CEO of McDonald’s,” DeGeneres argues, implying that she sees herself more as a mascot than a leader. These bits start to knock the air out of how she talked about her actions earlier in the special: At their most self-aggrandizing, they warp the language of mental health to explain her failings within a workplace infrastructure.

The Humorism newsletter officially recommends Tim Platt’s album Teeth Like Beak, out today from Abso Lutely Records. Check it out!