Theory 2 Action Podcast
Theory 2 Action Podcast
MM#392--Live From New York, It's Saturday Night Live...time for reruns!
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Is "Saturday Night Live" still the comedic powerhouse it once was, or has its cultural impact waned as audiences shift to new platforms?
Join us on the Theory to Action & MOJO Minute podcast as we crack open these questions and more, reflecting on SNL's history through the entertaining lens of Tom Hanks' controversial sketch at the 50th anniversary.
With insights from the book "Live from New York," we unravel the dynamic intersection of comedy, pop culture, and politics. Michael Barone, a distinguished political historian, adds depth to our discussion, lending his expertise on the cultural cleavages that shape American politics, as explored in his book "Our Country."
Journey with us as we compare the tumultuous presidencies of Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump, examining the echoes of history in contemporary politics. We ponder the potential transformations a second Trump term could bring, all the while reminiscing about SNL's past comedic glory days with Dana Carvey and Dennis Miller. As we look at the factors behind SNL's declining viewership, we question the role of streaming habits and audience preferences. Tune in as we dissect the layers of political commentary and cultural reflection, all wrapped in the humor and nostalgia of a show that has long mirrored America's soul.
Key Points from this Episode:
• Highlights Tom Hanks' controversial sketch and mixed reactions
• Discusses cultural divisions as outlined by Michael Barone
• Examines SNL's long-standing influence and recent decline
• Considers humor’s role in political discourse and audience reception
• Explores potential future directions for SNL in a competitive landscape
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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Flourishing life Now, here's your host, david Kaiser.
Speaker 2:Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute, as is our custom sometimes. Let's begin with our book of the day quote. It's highly doubtful that anyone associated with the premiere of Saturday Night Live's longest-running comedy show returned to Studio AH to celebrate its apocryphal 40th anniversary. The special, which spanned more than three and a half hours of primetime on NBC, truly had something for everybody who had ever loved or even liked the program and it's also true, true to form had something for everybody to bitch about. Lorne Michaels, the show's creator and its producer for all but five of those 40 years, was determined to invite everybody associated with SNL in a significant way to attend the TV special and splashy after gala, and he gave orders to the producers and writers of the special to include as many celebrated or notorious highlights from the four decades of SNL as possible. And that quote comes to us from a book titled Live from New York the complete, uncensored history of Saturday Night Live, written by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. That quote was plucked from the preface of the 2015 edition and in 2015, as the book stated that the show SNL marked its 40th anniversary, milestone was celebrated with a special live broadcast on February 15th 2015, featuring a star studded lineup of past and present cast members, incredible musical performances and memorable sketches from the show's history. Incredible musical performances and memorable sketches from the show's history. The anniversary highlighted SNL's impact on comedy and pulp culture over the decades and, frankly, it was very cool to watch.
Speaker 2:Now, a week ago, snl celebrated its 50th anniversary and let's just say I couldn't watch. I did dip in and dip out of some segments and, frankly, some of the most awkward and, frankly, crazy segments I could not almost stomach. I did see, though, the Tom Hanks little bit and if you missed it, you can watch that on NBC Peacock for a rerun, or, frankly, it's been blistered all over YouTube so you can catch it from numerous content creators there. But, in summary, tom Hanks reprised his character of Doug from the Black Jeopardy sketch, portraying a Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat. The skit featured Doug making humorous but controversial remarks, such as hesitating to shake the Black host's hand before cautiously doing so, which drew some laughter from the audience. The sketch sparked enormous backlash online online, with critics accusing Hanks and SNL of perpetuating stereotypes about Trump supporters as racist Neanderthals and, frankly, hanks faced enormous reactions across the internet, with some calling the performance offensive and others praising it unbelievably as sharp political commentary.
Speaker 2:What I thought was weird was it was frankly just not funny. Kept waiting on the good lines, the great writing of the skit, but there was nothing there. It was a dud, it was a swing and a miss, or well, as frankly they say in comedy, the joke fell flat on the floor. It fell so fast on the floor and flat that it was kicked all the way down the hallway. It was that bad. And as for the sharp political commentary that some have suggested, evidently someone isn't too sharp if they think that was sharp political commentary.
Speaker 2:To look for that sharp political commentary, one can turn to perhaps one of the most astute political historians over the last 50 years, who has seen his share of SNL episodes throughout those decades, and that would be Michael Barone, the godfather of the almanac of American politics, as many have called it, the Bible of the Beltway. Now he can be panned as a conservative by the radical libs for the last decade but one. If they know Barone's history, they would know he was a Democratic activist in the mid to late 1960s and for the better part of his life Barone has been spot on in measuring the tides and the eddies of the political waves that have been our US political life. And two ways that Barone can read a room and has been spot on is in one of his best books he ever wrote and, frankly, one of the best histories of America ever written about a specific time period, and that is Our Country, the Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. And let's measure his thinking by going to the book.
Speaker 2:This book is undergirded by three guiding thesis. Theses the first is that the United States politics is that in the United States, politics more often divides Americans along cultural than along economic lines, and that the politics of economic redistribution, thank you. This contradicts the widespread assumption that American politics revolves around questions of economic distribution Over, in the words of the title of a classic political science book, who gets what, when and how. That position is taken not just by Marxists but by progressive historians who began writing a century ago and whose ideas continue to influence much political writing and thinking today. Yet, over the long run, it's plain that politics more often divides us along cultural lines, along lines of region, race, ethnicity, religion or personal values. And this is what we should expect in a country which has always been affluent and where economic upward mobility is the common experience but where distinctive cultural identities and views are often lasting and tenacious. And that cultural mix from the 1930s to the 1980s was progressively liberal. And anyone who has read the book can exceptionally say that Barone can read the room and the country because he nailed it in that book.
Speaker 2:And for us Brown loyalists, we have wished for some time that he would update this wonderful book to include his analysis from 1980 onward, possibly to 2025, with its possible realignment of the Roosevelt Coalition of Blacks and Minorities and manual laborers switching to Donald Trump in 2024 with increasing intensity. Here's just a few of those numbers. But in his third general election campaign, trump had won increased support from groups that his opponents and most commentators never thought he could. That his opponents and most commentators never thought he could. The 2024 CNN exit poll shows Trump winning 17% of black people to Vice President Kamala Harris' 82, tying her 48-48 among Hispanic people and beating her 50-47 among Asians. Similar results come from the Fox News survey Trump won 16% of Black people, 43% of Asians or 43% of Latinos, 41% of Asians and NBC's exit poll 13% from Black people, 46% from Latinos and 39% from Asians In the seven target states, trump's percentages among Black people lagged, but turnout was down, suggesting ambivalence among many black voters, while his percentages tended higher, sometimes over 50%, among target state Latino and Asian peoples.
Speaker 2:So again back to Michael Barone and our wish that he would update this book Our Country from Roosevelt to Reagan Barone in his writing of his not weekly columns not sure how often they come out, but he's still writing columns for the Washington Examiner. He has outlined two books that he does love and I'm sure if he writes an update to the book Our Country, it will include these two books Patrick Raffini's Party of the People and Sean Trendy's from Real Clear Politics, his 2012 book the Lost Majority. Both of these books give us a glimpse into Brown's thinking, along with his written columns, and one of those columns he just wrote a month ago says this, and this is quite prescient, and this is why we look to Michael Brown for the harbingers of what is to come. Go on to his column there are certain resemblances. He's talking about Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump and how they're quite similar. There are certain resemblances.
Speaker 2:Jackson's demeanor, like Trump's, appalled his predecessors he was from the Tennessee frontier, killed a man in a duel and abandoned Congress to become an elected general in the state militia, angling for a national command. Jackson became a celebrity for slaughtering the British at New Orleans in 1815. Thomas Jefferson, who, as vice president, had presided as the 30-year-old Rep, jackson exploded in fury, called him a quote dangerous man and told visitors to Monticello years later that he was, in his biographer Dumas Malone's words, a man of violent passions who has shown little regard for laws or institutions. As president Jackson took things personally. As president Jackson took things personally, ousting all cabinet members because their wives refused to socialize with his Secretary of War's young second wife, who was accused, as Jackson's late wife had been, of loose morals. Senate in one Congress voted to censor him. He got the next Senate to vote to rescind that rebuke and draw lines across the earlier censure in the Senate Journal. Can I ask who does that sound like? Yep, donald J Trump. One more quote to make this point Effective border enforcement and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants enjoys supermajority support, as shown by the 264 House and 64 Senate votes for the Lake and Riley Act and 64 Senate votes for the Lake and Riley Act. An end to electric vehicle mandates and barriers to energy production is in line with the public's desire for consumer choice. The dozens of executive order Trump has signed since taking the oath of office this was written in late January have shown a similar level of preparation and seriousness, apparent in his dozens of appointments to second and third line positions in executive agencies, a vivid contrast to his chaotic transition eight years ago.
Speaker 2:It took Andrew Jackson until his second term to control his administration and his party in Congress, and historians have overstated his political ascendancy in labeling his times quote the Jackson era. Trump's second term, like Jackson's, will surely have its setbacks, and already there has been spotted departures from some principles. But it doesn't seem completely inappropriate for the 47th president who has the seventh president portraits on his wall. And, as you know from reading your history books, andrew Jackson was a force of nature. The country had never seen anything like him before or since, and I'm going to bet and Barone makes the effective case for this that Donald Trump just might be a force of nature like Andrew Jackson, essentially rewriting everything after him and in his era. Brown is right that from the New Deal progressivism under FDR beginning in 1932 and until Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, the country was shaped by liberalism, with a few hiccups here and there, but not many. Reagan's counter-revolution improved the country economically, but not the administrative state. Trump's America is shaping up to be a second act of that same counter-revolution. What the future holds, god only knows.
Speaker 2:As for a prominent cultural beacon like Saturday Night Live, for the last 50 years, its ratings demise for the last 10 seems expected. The breakdown is this it had peak ratings in 2015 and 2016. It averaged 8.2 million viewers during that season, with a strong 2.7 demo rating among adults under 50, making it highly competitive at the time, with the rise of streaming platforms and younger audiences shifting away from the traditional TV. By 2025, snl's Nielsen ratings dropped significantly, but were only bolstered by Peacock and the on-demand viewership, elevating its demo rating to 1.8 when you include those sources. But ratings for season 25, or season 47 rather not 25, season 47, 2021, saw a sharp 35% drop compared to the previous year, and by 2024, 2025, live viewership hovered around 4 to 5 million per episode, with a demo rating often below 1.0 for adults under 50. Now the special episode, the 50th Anniversary Special, drew nearly 15 million viewers, showcasing SNL's ability to attract large audiences during its milestone events, despite its horrific and exceedingly deep drop in irregular season declines. So in today's Mojo Minute for the last 50 years well, at least 40 of those years SNL had hit the mark for ratings. Snl had hit the mark for ratings.
Speaker 2:Their decades-long slide from 2015 till now is representative of the show. It's mediocre at best, unwatchable at worst, and that's most of the time. You dip in here and there for five minutes to see the new talent, but no one's jumping off the screen at you. And as for Tom Hanks, in the bit about making fun of MAGA when there's a lot to make fun of and then totally whiffing seems well, I guess, expected. They have lost the fastball, as they say in baseball, but just for laughs, because that's what we expect from SNL. Have you seen Dana Carvey do a Trump impression? It's pretty funny, actually pretty hilarious, and I know Carvey couldn't make the 50th anniversary special for some reason. Wonder why? Could he read the room and know what was coming? Or perhaps a Dennis Miller roasting folks and the MAGA gang for one last time for a weekend update could have been epic, and I'm almost sure Donald Trump would even have to laugh at some of those Dennis Miller-isms. Not sure if Dennis was there or not at the 50th. My research couldn't find anything out about it. Eight years of doing Weekend Update for Dennis Miller was a lifetime on that show because they were always measured in dog ears and my man lit it up doing that bit.
Speaker 2:But Tom Hanks for the MAGA skit, hmm, not sure why Tom Hanks was even chosen for that bit. And, tom, can we ask, why did you accept it? Man, you were on top of the world in terms of your legacy, most likely the Michael Jordan in the acting business, certainly one of the greatest actors of his generation. Tom Hanks is, I mean, holy smokes, going from Save a Private Ryan to Philadelphia dealing with the serious matters of life, to his comedy bit in Big and Toy Story quite funny. And then the cultural phenomenon of Forrest Gump and then the truly epic movie of Castaway that folks are still studying line by line, in which Tom did impeccable acting. Why did you accept that skit, tom? Did you hate Trump that much? And, frankly, the skit, it just wasn't funny, it just wasn't good. I mean it was very JV, the writing was JV, the acting was JV, just very Bush League.
Speaker 2:And so for Lorne Michaels and his legacy and the show's legacy, his ability to choose the new talent and the new comedians of the future. His ability to read a room and read a country well, as they say in showbiz, was a dud, a complete miss. The joke fell so flat on the floor that everyone was looking back at the comedian on stage in fright. A show that replaced Johnny Carson reruns way back in 1975 now should be looking to get replaced Maybe by those same Carson reruns, because those Carson reruns from the 1960s and 70s are much more funny than the SNL crew and Lauren Michaels, who have just simply lost their fastball. And as always, folks keep fighting the good fight and especially keep laughing at the funny stuff. Snl not so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.