“Saturday Night Live” celebrates its 50th anniversary this month – no small feat in a swirling media landscape.
The show’s impact on pop culture is impossible to overstate. Consider the superstars that sprang from the NBC showcase and their individual legacies:
- Eddie Murphy
- Bill Murray
- Chevy Chase
- Chris Rock
- Will Ferrell
- Tina Fey
- Adam Sandler
- Mike Myers
The list goes on … and on.
Sketch comedy is synonymous with “SNL” after decades of iconic clips. Bravo, indeed.
Except “SNL” has stumbled in recent years, battered by self-inflicted wounds. A show born from chaos and creativity is now part of the Left’s progressive playbook. Perhaps a show can only be counter-culture for so long, but the time has been more than ripe to fight back against progressive groupthink.
Instead, “SNL” took an extended knee. Sketches like this proved the exception to the corporate rule.
It’s why it’s refreshing to see two “SNL” alums step up and tell the jokes the show should be spinning.
David Spade and Dana Carvey co-host “Fly on the Wall,” a podcast spawned from their “SNL” days. The show zeroed in on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky sharing that much of the money the United States has given to his war-torn country never arrived.
That’s roughly $100 billion that went missing. It’s the kind of story that should keep journalists up at night. Comedy satirists might also feast on it, speaking truth to power in the process.
Late-night comedians haven’t run with the material. It’s unlikely “SNL” will, either.
Why? Wrong narrative. Wrong party.
“Billions are too much to keep an eye on. That’s my humble opinion. It used to be millions. Hard enough. A billion here, who knows if it’s going to the right thing. Who knows?” Spade said.
The duo named names. Former President Joe Biden, for one. Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, too.
“Biden sent Gavin Newsom with a big fat check” ‘Make sure it gets in Zelensky’s hands.’ This is California level of incompetence,” Carvey added.
“California is famous because they lost $20 million homeless money. They didn’t lose it. They just don’t know where it went,” Spade said. “It makes you not want to pay taxes, because you go, ‘just fix a road, do something I see, don’t just make everything worse.’ More money and everything gets worse. I don’t know how the Ukraine [situation] worked … but maybe they sent it by Zelle.”
“DOGE is working on it,” Carvey said.
Why does this matter?
Comedy can cut through the media noise. The right joke or comic narrative illuminates a problem better than a single headline or white paper.
Where is U.S. taxpayer money going? Why are billions being lost along the way? Shouldn’t we be focused on the answers to these questions?
“SNL” has the resources to ask these questions. Will the show do anything of the kind? Or, is it up to “SNL” alums, working on a podcast with a fraction of the classic show’s budget, to ask the tough questions and find humor in the process?
We have our answer, of course. It’s why the show’s 50th anniversary is such a bittersweet affair. The show’s big gala debuts Feb. 16 on NBC.
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