SNL, Network Bias and Your Vote
As a baby boomer, I came of age in the early years of Saturday Night Live. The unique program broadcast live from Rockefeller Center in…
As a baby boomer, I came of age in the early years of Saturday Night Live. The unique program broadcast live from Rockefeller Center in New York was a weekly event for all of us. Whenever any major newsworthy incident happened, the question we always asked was: “What will Saturday Night Live do about it this weekend?”
Such events even included a comedy satire about the worst nuclear accident in the United States: Three Mile Island. (TMI)
I still remember Richard Benjamin acting in a skit as a TMI company spokesman that the nuclear radiation release was minimal: “Like if you dried your hair in a microwave oven.” (Do not try this at home or anywhere else.)
I remember Dan Ackroyd acting as Tom Snyder or Jimmy Carter. Gilda Radner as Roseanne Rosannadanna and Emily Litella and her “nevermind,” when Chevy Chase corrected her on such things as issues not with Soviet jewelry, but Soviet Jewry. Who can forget the exhortation: “It will behoove ya, to care for your uvula”.
We would watch it live usually with a few beers. Today, you can also watch it on demand, but that misses the point. The program was ground-breaking by members of our generation and for our generation.
I don’t watch it all today. I am in bed by 11:30pm falling asleep to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday Night, which also is broadcast live, but from Nashville.
Many say SNL is no longer a funny program and that may be true, I would not know. However, it gets into the news for its attacks on all things Trump.
I grew up in a media family: my, now late, father worked for the Boston Globe long before the New York Times took it over. I used to work for public radio. Today, we know the objectivity of the media is a thing of the past.
The weekly attacks by SNL upon President Donald Trump lead to his weekly response by twitter feed regularly complaining about Saturday Night Live. Alec Baldwin satirizes him regularly. Whether the president is correct or not is a point for discussion at another time.
Back in those pre-New York Times days of the Boston Globe in 1976, David B. Wilson lamented that Saturday Night Live contributed to the re-election defeat of then President Gerald Ford.
In 2008 on CNN, Chevy Chase admitted that was his intention, he wanted Carter to win.
So there is precedent for Mr. Trump’s concern.
Recently, the president called for the program to be investigated. What would be the result: Maybe the requirement for crew, writers and staff to register as lobbyists?
Before, you start screaming freedom of speech, there is precedent for this; it is happening now.
Lee Camp is a comedian and a former writer for the Daily Show with John Stewart. He is now the host of Redacted Tonight, a comedy program on the Russian TV Network RT/USA broadcasting to his fellow Americans. He opens the program announcing that he, despite his American citizenship and broadcasting from Washington, DC, must call himself a foreign agent.
The United States does not recognize his program as simply comedy and, in fact, it is not.
Saturday Night Live is not a program of simply comedy. Alec Baldwin, an intensely talented actor, does a great satire of President Trump, but stated several years ago that will not stop until Mr. Trump releases his tax returns. He is, therefore, also putting pressure on the president, he is not simply entertaining.
Today SNL is like it was in the days of Chevy Chase a program that promotes its politics to its audience while entertaining them. Therefore, should Saturday Night Live be investigated for bias, as the president requests?
Actually, no.
In time, every media organization would ultimately be investigated and freedom of speech would be curtailed. It would turn into a McCarthyism war that would have no winners. I am not so sure that Lee Camp should have to register as a foreign agent either. The little RT symbol in the bottom left hand corner of the screen is already a reminder that his program is financed by the Russian government. Enough said.
The solution is simple — to recognize there is intense pro-democratic party media bias in some media venues and intense pro-republican party media bias in others. The way to fight any bias is to know the facts and to think for yourself. Freedom is not won by forcing others to think the way you want them to think, it is won when people are in pursuit of and living for truth and the common good.
Ultimately, despite watching SNL every week, I actually voted for President Ford. I was not a staunch Republican nor am I one now. I am unenrolled. In my eighteen year old mind, I saw President Ford did not seem to do much. Thomas Paine taught: “The government that governs least, governs best.” I still believe that and that was my reasoning. It did not matter how many times Chevy Chase fell down as Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live, he did not influence my vote.
The best way to address any form of bias is to be aware of the bias and know the facts.
Today, when people talk to me about voting and my position on candidates, I stay out of that discussion. I just remind them that as we see in Venezuela, elections are not games and they must be taken seriously. Hitler was also democratically elected.
If people really are easily swayed to vote for a candidate because Saturday Night endorses or rejects him or her, then our country is in deeper trouble than it appears.