Member-only story
Why Saturday Night Live’s 50th Reminded Me About The Show Normalizing Trump
Sometimes…we are the butt of the televised punchline.
Trigger warning: this article references Trump a lot as well as the rape allegations against him and the ones he admitted were true in that infamous video, as well as media’s tendency to normalize him.
My relationship with Saturday Night Live is up and down. As a teen, my family jokingly compared me to Debbie Downer because I was obsessed with injustices in the world. (And no, I still don’t appreciate that while trying to deal with the fact that I’m dealing with a lot of bitterness about the world at the moment.) When the 2016 election nonsense happened along with being laid off from a job plus my mom fracturing her arm, my siblings cheered me up by showing various SNL clips. But even then I had doubts about the show and its impact.
The 50th anniversary special aired this Sunday, unusual since SNL usually airs on Saturday, hence the name. But a show being on the air for 50 years is quite an accomplishment. So I watched a bit of the show with my sister and BIL, who are visiting for the holiday. My mood wasn’t the greatest for many reasons, the news being one of them, but I didn’t want to give up any family time.
