This is one of the most weird episodes of a late night talk show I’ve seen.  Periodically, some late night shows, notably David Letterman, would have some odd theme – like “Reverse Night” or cameras on rollerskating monkeys.  But this one is high up on the list – it’s a Conan O’Brien show from 1987 when the audience was made up entirely of little kids. 
 
For part of the time, he plays the show fairly straightforward, like beginning jokes “You kids all read the newspaper, right?  Well, in the news today…” leading into a joke about O.J.  Simpson, or a joke about Barbara Streisand, to which he notes, “You remember her from Yentl, and having as one of the guests Myron Kandel, financial editor of CNN Financial News – who actually has a straight-forward discussion of the stock market and inflation…as the camera periodically guts to bored kids.  Though, of course, there’s a great deal of pandering to the kids, including Naughty Land, the Boring Monster, and the loopy Sick Exotic Bird Parade.  And much more, including a short video sketch of Conan taking a group of 6-year-olds on a tour of the studio, at one point getting them to ridicule the show’s interns.   Fun, too, is the kids in the audience just being kids and regularly yelling back comments to Conan and his guests.
 
Since the commercials are edited out, It’s only about 38 minutes.  But even if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, it’s definitely fun to see their effort for a few minutes.
​

I think I’ve given up trying to figure out what Saturday Night Live is thinking. 
 
For starters, they have yet to do a single joke (let alone an entire sketch) about Trump using the language of Adolf Hitler.  We could stop right there and wonder how on earth a comedic satire show that has a “Weekend Update” comedy news segment cannot even just reference this once – let alone write a full sketch on it.  But there’s so much more – because they also have yet to even make one joke or reference or write a sketch about Trump saying he wants to be a dictator on Day One should he be re-elected.  And we could stop there, as well.  But they also have totally ignored And Trump saying that he wants to rewrite the Constitution.  And Trump saying a president should have total immunity to do whatever he wants without any constriction of the law.  And Trump being found liable for the equivalence of rape.  And Trump being found guilty of fraud.  Nothing.  Not one sketch.  Not one joke.
 
But it’s worse than that.  Because for five straight weeks they made jokes about Joe Biden being old (which is fine, though the problem is that five weeks in a row is highly questionable comedy judgement – let alone judgement, period) and worse… no mention at all, not once, of Trump being essentially the same age.  Just five straight weeks of “Joe Biden is old” joke only,
 
I truly don’t understand their choices.
 
That said, this past Saturday, for the very first time, they did at last make a joke about Trump being old and confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.  Unfortunately, they could even do that standalone, but preceded it first with a joke about Joe Biden mixing up someone he took a photograph with and someone in Congress. And then spent the next minute talking about how both men are old.
 
I should note that the problem here is not a “both sides” thing.  After all, Trump has previously confused Joe Biden several times with Barack Obama, as if Trump believes he ran against President Obama and that Obama is still in office.  Further, it’s one thing to mix up a random, anonymous person in a crowd with one of 435 members of Congress, as President Biden did (not great, but hardly a huge issue) – and it’s another thing entirely to tell a story about the January 6 Insurrection and confuse your main GOP opponent today with the then-Speaker of the House!  But even more to the point (and yes, it’s worse), in confusing these two major national figures, Trump was egregiously lying, not just mixing up two people it’s improbable to mix up – not only saying to his rally that the Speaker of the House was responsible for Capitol security on January 6 (which is not remotely true), but also saying that he offered to send 10,000 members of armed protective forces to the Washington but the Speaker turned it down…which is not remotely true.
 
And yet, in Saturday Night Live’s eyes, when they finally got around to telling a “Trump is old” joke, after five weeks of only “Joe Biden is old” jokes, decided to put all this together as if it’s all the same. 
 
It’s not the same.  And I don’t begin to understand what SNL is doing.  Or rather, not doing.

And this doesn’t even include Saturday Night Live having Trump on as host, and then have Elon Musk host the show – two people who more than most any American to push the United States toward fascism.
 
I find myself utterly bewildered about their writing choices.  Yes, I know comedy writing is subjective, and you pick and choose your targets.  But I know too that my career has been writing comedy, so I at least have a sense of what goes into the process.
 
The people who put together Saturday Night Live are smart.  And funny.  And good writers.  They watch the news.  They are social satirists and know what is going on in the country.  They know for absolute certain that either President Biden or Trump will be elected the next president.  And for some reason, which I find inexplicable, they have decided that “Joe Biden is old” week after week is a major hoot and far, far funnier a target for satire than his opponent who is just as old, is using the language of Hitler, said he wants to be a dictator, wants to rewrite the Constitution, wants total immunity for his crimes, was found liable for rape, found guilty of fraud and is under four indictments including one for inciting an Insurrection to overthrown the government and end democracy.

I can only note, as someone who writes comedy, has won some comedy writing awards, and sold comedy material that it would be incredibly easy to write full sketches on any of that material, let alone all of it.  And to just make a single joke about any of it is so basic that if you can’t do it, you not only aren’t trying, it borders on malpractice.

Comedy is subjective.  But honestly, I don’t know how you choose the first, week after week, and totally ignore the other????
 
No, it’s not like they haven’t done any Trump jokes, but the jokes they’ve done have generally been about his sons or how he rambles onto unconnected subjects when he talks.  When I say “totally ignore the other,” I mean the substantive matters, like…y’know, Hitler, dictatorship, the Constitution, rape, fraud and fascism.
 
And my reaction isn’t just creative bewilderment, but bordering on being galled because – though Saturday Night Live is just a comedy-variety show, it’s also a popular culture institution that’s been on television for 48 years.  And helps inform and influence younger viewers – and younger voters, many of whom get a lot of their political news from this comedy show and others.
 
To be clear, I don’t think SNL has an obligation nor even a responsibility to deliver political views on behalf of one side or the other.  And over the years, their political view has been weighted to liberal.  The show obviously has every right to present whatever jokes they want. 
 
But --
 
At issue for me is not as much what SNL has done, which is their total right, but the "why?" of it.  I don’t begin to understand why, creatively, Saturday Night Live has been avoiding jokes about the substantial, headline news of Trump, while singling out instead (week after week) that apparently only “Joe Biden is old” – if only because they’re goldmines for humor and political satire.  While “Joe Biden is old” jokes every week aren’t just “low-hanging fruit” to comedy writers, but as far as writing humor goes, is more like the fruit that fell on the ground and is so easy that anyone can just pick it up.  But I most-especially don’t understand why these smart, talented, social observers on SNL have chosen not to do so when they know for absolute certain that one of the two men will be elected the next President of the United States, and know that democracy is quite literally at stake at the risk of fascism.

Of course, just because I don't understand why they're totally avoiding these topics for sketches or even just jokes -- or a joke -- doesn't mean they don't have their reasons.  And of course, just because they have their reasons doesn't mean they're good ones... 

I live in hope that this will change soon on the show.  Politically, yes -- but creatively, too.

​From the archives.  This week’s contestant is Chris Freitag from New York City.  I think the hidden song should be extremely easy for most people.  Right off the bat, and then there is a passage later that removes any doubt.  The composer style was more difficult, though it’s based on an actual piece of music, so if you know it you’ll get the composer.  I didn’t, though I do like the composer.

​Phil Rosenthal invites his friend, two-time Academy Award winning actress Jane Fonda to lunch with co-host David Wild.  As he writes, they have “a conversation about art, family and life that's so amazing, we are dividing it into two parts just so that we can savor. Hear remarkable and sometimes surprising stories from one of Hollywood's most enduring and inspiring icons, and find out why Jane is such a big fan of Phil that she lovingly calls him, ‘The Jewish Tinkerbell.’"

​​On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is John Wilson, host-creator-director of the documentary series, How to… on HBO.  It’s an off-beat show, and the conversation with host Peter Sagal is as off-beat and fun, as well.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:15 mark.