Saturday Night Live

Pity ABC, NBC and CBS News. If the fall TV season comes and Sean Spicer is no longer White House Press Secretary, they’ll have to talk about something besides Saturday Night Live. Like maybe … news. Spicer is rumored to be leaving the press shop for another job in the administration. And if he’s not the daily face and voice of the Trump administration, it’s going to be hard for actress Melissa…

Al Franken’s recent book Giant of the Senate has a single aim, very much in line with Franken’s careers in media and politics: take down conservatives. Chock-full of quintessential nasty Franken wit, the book guides readers through Franken’s time on SNL, Air America, and – in recent years – the U.S. Senate. Reflections on (as well as various defenses of) his previous books, Lies and the Lying…

While a guest on Varney & Co. on the Fox Business Network on Tuesday, May 16, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee criticized a skit on the most recent Saturday Night Live program that attacked his daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who serves as deputy White House press secretary for the Trump administration.

The Hollywood Reporter has a new story on the “yuuge” year “Saturday Night Live” is having with its weekly sledge-hammering of Donald Trump. Interviews with the stars and writers confirm what we imagined. After the election, there was hugging and sobbing on the set. There was also choking back tears as they prepared the cringeworthy “cold open” where Kate McKinnon’s Hillary sang “Hallelujah.’

Saturday Night Live (mostly) avoided the subject of Donald Trump in it's opening last night and focused on the on-air dynamics of the newly engaged Morning Joe hosts, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. There was a bit of politics in the skit with the love couple discussing the recently passed health care bill but the main focus was satirizing the love (sometimes hate) relationship between the…

The man behind SNL's President Obama impersonation reveals the show's disinterest in Barack-based gags. Comedian Jay Pharoah’s impression of President Barack Obama was spot on. Too bad so few people noticed. Pharoah took the Obama impersonation baton from former “Saturday Night Live” star Fred Armisen. The black comedian had years to establish his Obama as pop culture’s definitive take on the…

In the stunned aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, America healed in part by tuning in to Saturday Night Live, just a few miles from the wreckage of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We all felt like New Yorkers and like Pentagon employees after radical Islamic terrorists killed more than 3,000 Americans by hijacking four airplanes.  Now, many years later, the American Civil Liberties Union…

The front page of Monday’s New York Times documented how liberals are seeking mental comfort food through old-fashioned means -- by binging on left-wing talk and comedy shows in front of the television set -- in “Seeking Communal Solace, Liberals Turn Back to the TV," which began with this unpromising opening line: "There is a new safe space for liberals in the age of President Trump: the…

An irony-ignorant skit on the March 11 edition of Saturday Night Live featured a parody commercial portraying Ivanka Trump promoting a perfume called "Complicit." Washington Post writer Aaron Blake covered the episode in an alleged "Analysis" blog post, yet managed to ignore the February success of Ivanka's product line despite a declared leftist boycott and Nordstrom dropping her brand.

Liberal actor and comedian Alec Baldwin has quickly become well-known for playing President Donald Trump on NBC's Saturday Night Live program, but he recently stated in an interview with Mario Lopez of the Extratv.com website that he's not sure how much longer he will continue to do his impression of the Republican occupant of the White House.

In addition to lampooning the Donald on SNL, progressive actor Alec Baldwin has announced plans to co-author a satirical book about the president. Titled “You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump,” the book is a joint project between Baldwin and novelist Kurt Anderson. While Anderson will be the primary author,…

You might call it The Media versus America. The President of the United States held a press conference on Thursday. On that, everyone agreed. But after that? Words like “unhinged” a particular favorite to describe the event. Here’s a sample of the headline reaction.The New York Times: An Aggrieved President Moves His Surrogates Aside, The Washington Post: Debrief: In an erratic performance, Trump…

Don't expect the media to fact check any sketches painting President Trump in a bad light. Reporters are too busy cheering them on. Remember when Saturday Night Live mocked President Barack Obama? Yes, it did happen. Only the sketches aimed at the first black president were so rare they became a special event, like a holiday of sorts.

The New York Times was correct in 2011 when it proclaimed Saturday Night Live had no equal “when it comes to stamping a politician in the public consciousness.” Republican politicians like Sarah Palin were described as incapable of escaping the SNL treatment, and voters actually thought Palin uttered Tina Fey’s satirical line “I can see Russia from my house.”  And yet, as the Times noted after…