The perhaps deservedly permanent fall from grace of Saturday Night Live
Criticizing an institution is fraught with interpersonal danger. Lifelong defenders will defend it without considering the merits of your critique.
In the case of the longtime favorite, AND MY LONGTIME FAVORITE: “Saturday Night Live” (SNL), I have hesitated to write much about it, as it has brought me decades of joy on Saturday nights, leading into Sunday morning.
There is more hesitancy here before letting loose my disappointment: the players therein are very good. Their timing, their playing off their compatriots, their seeming lack of genuine ill-will toward their objects of satire and their seeming excellent camaraderie among one another. No harsh interpersonal jealousies and conflicts since the early days with Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Belushi and others.
But at the root of the success of SNL has always been that humor is the top goal, not getting one side of the political divide or one or several of those Lorne Michaels or the writers detest.
No longer the case.
Donald Trump and the Republicans and conservatives have become the exclusive political targets of the show.
Take as a representative example the show days ago on May 2, 2026.
As has been the case, although not as completely as last Saturday, it was embarrassingly confined to anti-Trump and anti-Republican material.
I ended up watching the entire show without a smile during their political humor: THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE JOKE ABOUT DEMOCRATS OR THE LEFT — NOT A ONE.
There was forced humor with joke after joke after unfunny joke about Trump. There was not a mention of possible comedy-rich Democratic targets Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Eric Swalwell, allegedly brother-betrothed Ilhan Omar, admitted low-SATs Gavin Newsome, the pathetic Jimmy Kimmel, etc., or Democrats’ linking up with anti-Semitic influencer Hasan Piker.
What a cowardly enterprise the once-funny Saturday Night Live show has become…all leftist all the time…literally.
Samples from Weekend Update: a joke about Trump’s would be assassin; an unfunny joke about Trump and Melania’s marriage; a joke implying Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s irresponsible drinking habits…nothing about Kamala, writers? new passports that reflect why “you…fled the country;” followed immediately by a joke implying Trump is our “first gay president.”
And there were more – equally clever.
What a waste of SNL…over and over and over…any of their writers want to quote a Democrat who conjectured that the assassination attempt was faked?
Saturday Night Live has a rich history of clever writers and comics, such as, but not limited to: Will Farrell, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Gilda Radner, Kristen Wiig, Chris Farley, Dan Ackroyd, Phil Hartman, Maya Rudolph, Adam Sandler (the best of the best), Rachel Dratch, Dana Carvey, Martin Short, Norm MacDonald and others.
It is more than disappointing to see a once-brilliant comedy show with still some brilliant comedians fall into the ideological abyss of unfunny single targeted “humor.”
Wonder if any of the players has the guts to complain to Lorne?
Richard E. Vatz https://wp.towson.edu/vatz/ is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of political rhetoric at Towson University and author of The Only Authentic of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model (Bookwrights House, 2024) and over 200 other works, essays, lectures, and op-eds. He is the benefactor of the Richard E. Vatz Best Debater Award at Towson. The Van Bokkelen Auditorium at Towson University has been named after him.