I used to think of Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a piece of pop culture that made an attempt at being progressive — to provide humor by shining a light on systemic oppression and the laughter was found in the irony/parody. While SNL has had its great triumphs and failures in the past 40 years, they have reached a new low by giving the racist, bigoted, misogynistic, homophobe Donald Trump a platform for hate.
One can only assume that NBC and SNL do not care that they continue to push away targeted communities, such as the Latino community, the African-American community, and the LGBTQ community, not to mention people who have shared identities in all of these communities. Of course Trump is an equal-opportunity hater, well-known for his rabid Islamophobia. He revels in perpetuating fear-mongering myths propped up by old white men. If SNL was doing a remount of 9 to 5 and cast Trump as Franklin Hart, I would get that and I could see how that would be funny, albeit type casting.
Trump’s appearance is a remarkable, disgusting reversal of NBC’s earlier actions. When The Hair That Roared made his infamous comments about Mexican immigrants in late June, the network severed all ties with him, stating:
At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values.
I guess the greedy quest for ratings/MONEY is more foundational even than that cornerstone.
Sadly, by giving Trump a platform and so much airtime, I can only assert that NBC and SNL are now colluding with a dominant white, male, heteronormative, discourse that shows nothing but disdain for people outside of that identity. How disappointing. I can only encourage people not to watch SNL and send a message that hosting and promoting HATE just isn’t funny.