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Why Is There No Alternative To Lorne Michaels' Late-Night Autocracy?
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Ubiquitous
Sep 30, 2019, 4:56:39 AM9/30/19
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In 2011, The Hollywood Reporter referred to Lorne Michaels as the “all-
powerful Oz” of NBC late-night. Michaels is the unimpeachable Executive
Producer of The Tonight Show, which averages about two to three million
viewers per night, and the majordomo of Saturday Night Live, which can pull
in between five to eight million viewers.
With a growing digital audience, there’s no telling how many pinned eyeballs
are at the mercy of Lorne Michaels. When accounting for total audience size
of The Tonight Show, SNL, and their respective subscribers on YouTube, you
discover that Lorne Michaels has the reach of a media tycoon like Rupert
Murdoch. Let that sink in, and then reflect on the fact that Michaels has a
monopoly over sketch comedy on network television; a genre of comedy that now
dispenses political propaganda with the same irresponsible gusto as the cable
news.
In the same way that Jon Stewart used real broadcast journalists to help The
Daily Show with fact-checking and research, it seems Lorne Michaels has
staffed SNL with writers who have a duel function as liberal activists and
satirists. SNL’s ideologically uniform writing room is the product of a
monocultural view of politics and the arts.
This is not how SNL has traditionally disseminated sketch comedy, but we’re
no longer in the age of “rebels with sweaters,” when the philosophy of SNL
was to attack the establishment, not to act as its surrogate.
In 1975, Lorne Michaels was a bratty and caustic maestro of a form of sketch
comedy that seemed as beautifully nihilistic as the mind of Richard Pryor.
Lorne Michaels stopped being that person when The Daily Show proved that
partisan political satire is a ratings draw. Since the presidency of Barack
Obama, SNL has essentially abandoned their tradition of being the anti-
establishment comedy troupe in favor of pandering to their audience of monied
liberals.
The cause of this shift is complicated, but The Daily Show seems to have
blurred the lines between satire and the cable news in such a way that satire
became more effective at political propaganda than the cable news. Vanity
Fair once suggested that Tina Fey’s SNL parody of Sarah Palin “possibly
helped derail Palin’s bid and put Barack Obama and Joe Biden in office.”
Several studies have supported this theory, which is why you should expect
almost every pre-credits cold-open in 2020 to focus on Trump, Pence, or the
GOP.
This is only funny if you’re a Democrat.
SNL is what happens when the Sex Pistols become the faces of an
environmentally conscious credit card company. SNL is now an antiseptic to
the sort of beautifully raunchy and fully liberated comedy that exists in the
clubs and the Netflix specials of Dave Chapelle and Bill Burr. As comedy
becomes increasingly polarized between woke and anti-woke comics, SNL has not
yet been able to adjust their recruitment efforts or comedic identity. Studio
8H is defined by a neutered and mimetic view of satire — informed almost
entirely by mainstream media tropes that rely on the view that every platform
must be used to resist the GOP; escapism and any notion of a “fairness
doctrine” in their writing room is as passé as the notion that a late-night
host should be a host, as opposed to an activist. This is why Jay Leno is the
last late-night host — this is also why Leno will never host today’s version
of SNL.
The problem isn’t that SNL is anti-conservative; the problem is that there is
no alternative for Americans who view SNL as either political propaganda or
the empty political satire of New York elites that even the far-left view as
lazy limousine liberals. I am not arguing that SNL should be more
conservative or hire more conservative comedians — I am arguing that SNL
shouldn’t be the Standard Oil of sketch comedy. Lorne Michaels shouldn’t be
able to singlehandedly crystallize how late-night viewers view Justice
Kavanaugh, for example.
Any challenge to Michaels’ supremacy over sketch comedy has failed miserably.
MADtv (which launched as an opportunity to recruit the audience that had
abandoned SNL) never had the promotional support of Fox and appealed to a
cult audience; In Living Color couldn’t find a balance with Fox executives;
The Dana Carvey Show failed because it was staffed by misanthropes and
stoners, and The Dave Chappelle Show collapsed because Chappelle isn’t Lorne
Michaels.
SNL is successful precisely because Lorne Michaels offers the perfect balance
of soulless corporate executive and comedy writer. The reason we may never
have a legitimate threat to SNL is that funny people generally aren’t as
gifted at political maneuvering as Michaels — whom we can picture lunching
with Hillary Clinton. And Lorne Michaels has no peer; ABC, CBS, and Fox do
not have an equivalent to him. The only threat to his cultural supremacy is
time. “There is not competition for Saturday Night Live,” NBC executive Dick
Ebersol once said, “except sleep.”
The liberal bias of SNL exists because Michaels is savvy enough to know that
the suits at NBC want SNL to validate their worldview and funding efforts,
not to challenge it. SNL rarely mocked President Obama’s arrogance because
they viewed him as a sacred cow. He was a protected property. When they do
mock Democrats such as AOC and Hillary Clinton, they never humiliate them
with the same degree of spite they use to absolutely destroy Sarah Palin,
Trump, and Kellyanne Conway. There’s always a wink-wink and degree of respect
when Kate McKinnon parodies Hillary Clinton as an unrelatable Devil Wears
Prada executive, as opposed to revealing much uglier facets of her political
persona.
When you place political boundaries around satirists, you remove their
ability to indiscriminately play with language, stereotypes, and tropes.
Generally speaking, a good joke “kills” and a bad one “dies,” but on SNL, a
good joke is whatever the mainstream media can use to advance their discourse
on Monday morning. At least that’s what it feels like for most Americans.
Conservatives and leftists may want to redirect their frustration away from
SNL’s corporate liberal bias, and towards entrepreneurial efforts to fund,
produce, and promote alternatives to SNL that produce sketch comedy that is
at least willing to staff its writers room with as many ideologically diverse
as racially diverse voices who can sack the antiquated empire of a 74-year-
old Canadian who now functions as the William Randolph Hearst of late-night.
--
Watching Democrats come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like
watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.
powerful Oz” of NBC late-night. Michaels is the unimpeachable Executive
Producer of The Tonight Show, which averages about two to three million
viewers per night, and the majordomo of Saturday Night Live, which can pull
in between five to eight million viewers.
With a growing digital audience, there’s no telling how many pinned eyeballs
are at the mercy of Lorne Michaels. When accounting for total audience size
of The Tonight Show, SNL, and their respective subscribers on YouTube, you
discover that Lorne Michaels has the reach of a media tycoon like Rupert
Murdoch. Let that sink in, and then reflect on the fact that Michaels has a
monopoly over sketch comedy on network television; a genre of comedy that now
dispenses political propaganda with the same irresponsible gusto as the cable
news.
In the same way that Jon Stewart used real broadcast journalists to help The
Daily Show with fact-checking and research, it seems Lorne Michaels has
staffed SNL with writers who have a duel function as liberal activists and
satirists. SNL’s ideologically uniform writing room is the product of a
monocultural view of politics and the arts.
This is not how SNL has traditionally disseminated sketch comedy, but we’re
no longer in the age of “rebels with sweaters,” when the philosophy of SNL
was to attack the establishment, not to act as its surrogate.
In 1975, Lorne Michaels was a bratty and caustic maestro of a form of sketch
comedy that seemed as beautifully nihilistic as the mind of Richard Pryor.
Lorne Michaels stopped being that person when The Daily Show proved that
partisan political satire is a ratings draw. Since the presidency of Barack
Obama, SNL has essentially abandoned their tradition of being the anti-
establishment comedy troupe in favor of pandering to their audience of monied
liberals.
The cause of this shift is complicated, but The Daily Show seems to have
blurred the lines between satire and the cable news in such a way that satire
became more effective at political propaganda than the cable news. Vanity
Fair once suggested that Tina Fey’s SNL parody of Sarah Palin “possibly
helped derail Palin’s bid and put Barack Obama and Joe Biden in office.”
Several studies have supported this theory, which is why you should expect
almost every pre-credits cold-open in 2020 to focus on Trump, Pence, or the
GOP.
This is only funny if you’re a Democrat.
SNL is what happens when the Sex Pistols become the faces of an
environmentally conscious credit card company. SNL is now an antiseptic to
the sort of beautifully raunchy and fully liberated comedy that exists in the
clubs and the Netflix specials of Dave Chapelle and Bill Burr. As comedy
becomes increasingly polarized between woke and anti-woke comics, SNL has not
yet been able to adjust their recruitment efforts or comedic identity. Studio
8H is defined by a neutered and mimetic view of satire — informed almost
entirely by mainstream media tropes that rely on the view that every platform
must be used to resist the GOP; escapism and any notion of a “fairness
doctrine” in their writing room is as passé as the notion that a late-night
host should be a host, as opposed to an activist. This is why Jay Leno is the
last late-night host — this is also why Leno will never host today’s version
of SNL.
The problem isn’t that SNL is anti-conservative; the problem is that there is
no alternative for Americans who view SNL as either political propaganda or
the empty political satire of New York elites that even the far-left view as
lazy limousine liberals. I am not arguing that SNL should be more
conservative or hire more conservative comedians — I am arguing that SNL
shouldn’t be the Standard Oil of sketch comedy. Lorne Michaels shouldn’t be
able to singlehandedly crystallize how late-night viewers view Justice
Kavanaugh, for example.
Any challenge to Michaels’ supremacy over sketch comedy has failed miserably.
MADtv (which launched as an opportunity to recruit the audience that had
abandoned SNL) never had the promotional support of Fox and appealed to a
cult audience; In Living Color couldn’t find a balance with Fox executives;
The Dana Carvey Show failed because it was staffed by misanthropes and
stoners, and The Dave Chappelle Show collapsed because Chappelle isn’t Lorne
Michaels.
SNL is successful precisely because Lorne Michaels offers the perfect balance
of soulless corporate executive and comedy writer. The reason we may never
have a legitimate threat to SNL is that funny people generally aren’t as
gifted at political maneuvering as Michaels — whom we can picture lunching
with Hillary Clinton. And Lorne Michaels has no peer; ABC, CBS, and Fox do
not have an equivalent to him. The only threat to his cultural supremacy is
time. “There is not competition for Saturday Night Live,” NBC executive Dick
Ebersol once said, “except sleep.”
The liberal bias of SNL exists because Michaels is savvy enough to know that
the suits at NBC want SNL to validate their worldview and funding efforts,
not to challenge it. SNL rarely mocked President Obama’s arrogance because
they viewed him as a sacred cow. He was a protected property. When they do
mock Democrats such as AOC and Hillary Clinton, they never humiliate them
with the same degree of spite they use to absolutely destroy Sarah Palin,
Trump, and Kellyanne Conway. There’s always a wink-wink and degree of respect
when Kate McKinnon parodies Hillary Clinton as an unrelatable Devil Wears
Prada executive, as opposed to revealing much uglier facets of her political
persona.
When you place political boundaries around satirists, you remove their
ability to indiscriminately play with language, stereotypes, and tropes.
Generally speaking, a good joke “kills” and a bad one “dies,” but on SNL, a
good joke is whatever the mainstream media can use to advance their discourse
on Monday morning. At least that’s what it feels like for most Americans.
Conservatives and leftists may want to redirect their frustration away from
SNL’s corporate liberal bias, and towards entrepreneurial efforts to fund,
produce, and promote alternatives to SNL that produce sketch comedy that is
at least willing to staff its writers room with as many ideologically diverse
as racially diverse voices who can sack the antiquated empire of a 74-year-
old Canadian who now functions as the William Randolph Hearst of late-night.
--
Watching Democrats come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like
watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.
FPP
Sep 30, 2019, 7:00:19 AM9/30/19
to
On 9/29/19 4:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> This is only funny if you’re a Democrat.
Let's see... you're scared of 16 year old disabled girls, and now - a
> This is only funny if you’re a Democrat.
Weekend Comedy Show.
What's next? Goosebumps movies?
--
"You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all
so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe
you." - Donald J. Trump
(To Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes in response to the question of why he
attacks the press so often.)
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