'Satire is What Closes on a Saturday NIght'

[Mark Jeffries]

Back in 1975, a more rebellious Lorne Michaels and the like-minded Boomers who were creating "Saturday Night Live" had to be aware of George S. Kaufman's famous quip as they were preparing for what they were hoping as their new home for satire on television--49 years later, Kaufman may be the winner--in an interview with Chicago Tribune film critic MIchael Phillips, Anne Libera of The Second City says that satire is not working right now because it requires pain and "psychic or temporal distance," and we may have the pain right now, but we sure as hell don't have the distance:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/08/column-about-that-snl-student-protest-sketch-and-a-lousy-time-for-political-satire/?share=thaecrmoht5pfhnoo0f0

[Tom Wolper]

The article is much deeper than the Kaufman quip and I recommend reading it. The issue of temporal distance is that things change more quickly than we can respond to, let alone satirize. The first major battles involving the US military in Vietnam were in 1965 and the satire we remember comes from 1968 and later. Under the best of circumstances it’s tough to get good material out and with the rapid rate of change in the political world and foreign affairs it’s nearly impossible.

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 10:18 AM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Back in 1975, a more rebellious Lorne Michaels and the like-minded Boomers who were creating "Saturday Night Live" had to be aware of George S. Kaufman's famous quip as they were preparing for what they were hoping as their new home for satire on television--49 years later, Kaufman may be the winner--in an interview with Chicago Tribune film critic MIchael Phillips, Anne Libera of The Second City says that satire is not working right now because it requires pain and "psychic or temporal distance," and we may have the pain right now, but we sure as hell don't have the distance:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/08/column-about-that-snl-student-protest-sketch-and-a-lousy-time-for-political-satire/?share=thaecrmoht5pfhnoo0f0

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