Elon Musk's Upcoming Hosting Gig Suggests That SNL Learned Nothing from the Donald Trump Debacle
I imagine that Lorne Michaels deeply regrets having Donald Trump host Saturday Night Live on November 7, 2015, just a little under a year before he shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election.
Incidentally, I can only imagine how much money on taxes a multi-millionaire like Lorne Michaels saved during Trump’s time in office.
I have not watched Saturday Night Live since suffering through the Trump episode. That’s not a coincidence. I only watched the Donald Trump episode out of morbid curiosity and because it was, objectively speaking, one of the most important and controversial episodes in the show’s forty-six year history.
The episode of Saturday Night Live that Donald Trump hosted offended me politically and morally but also comedically. It wasn’t just bad and unfunny, it was fucking brutal, a barren wasteland. It was empty and soulless and craven. I felt dirty afterwards. Heck, I felt dirty while I was watching it.
I had low to no expectations for Trump on Saturday Night Live and they still managed to shimmy under them.
I was not alone in hate-watching Trump’s second time hosting Saturday Night Live, or hating everything everything about. On Wikipedia, the episodes notes include, “The choice of Trump was controversial and a number of Latino groups petitioned to have his invitation to host rescinded” followed by “Unforeseen at the time, Trump would go on to win the presidency, one year and one day after hosting this episode.”
Did Trump’s time with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players help him get elected president? Possibly.
It doesn’t matter that Trump’s episode was universally panned or that Saturday Night Live had clearly invited Trump to host because he was famous and guaranteed huge ratings and not because it shared his far right wing political beliefs.
What matters is that being asked to host Saturday Night Live is an honor. The host is posited as a friend of the show that gets the call from Lorne, then spends a dazzling, difficult but incredibly satisfying week clowning around with the gang at 30 Rock before the big day rolls around and they get to spend 90 terrifying, exhilarating minutes doing live television sketch comedy with some of the funniest people in the world, after which the host is a part of Saturday Night Live history forever.
Donald Trump hosting Saturday Night Live will be a black mark on the venerable sketch comedy institution for eternity but it ultimately worked out as planned for Trump and Saturday Night Live.
Despite bad press and scathing reviews, the Donald Trump episode of Saturday Night Live was far and away the most watched of the entire season. And on November 3rd, 2016 Trump rode the Saturday Night Live bump all the way to the presidency.
I’d like to think that Lorne Michaels has learned something in the interim about the enormous power he wields and how to use it responsibly, but the news that Elon fucking Musk will be hosting the May 8th episode of Saturday Night Live suggests that he hasn’t learned a goddamn thing.
Musk is obviously not as destructive or toxic a figure as Trump. He’s not running for President, thank God, but I suspect the only reason an Elon Musk presidential run is not in the works is because he was born in South Africa and consequently is ineligible.
Asking someone to host Saturday Night Live is an inherently political act. It’s a matter of signal-boosting people and ideas and giving hosts 90 minutes on one of the most legendary and influential shows in television history to promote their brand along with their latest project.
At a time when Socialism has never been more popular and the savage, murderous iniquities of capitalism have never been more achingly apparent, Saturday Night Live is giving the second richest man in the world, with an estimated worth of 151 billion dollars, a platform to illustrate the hip, cool, sexy side of capitalism.
Saturday Night Live is giving the poster boy for the free market an opportunity to show that he has a sense of humor about himself, that he’s not just in on the joke, but willing to make fun of himself.
But is Musk really in on the joke? Does he have a sense of humor about himself? Probably not! When the Onion had the audacity to suggest that the South African billionaire’s fortune is rooted indelibly in Apartheid he tweeted, “Shame on you, Onion. This is why people are switching to@TheBabylonBee!"
Actually, folks read the Babylon Bee because they’re racist, transphobic assholes with terrible senses of humor, which helps explain why Musk is a huge fan who has used his enormous social media platform to help promote their hateful, bigoted brand of non-comedy.
I don’t know much about Musk, but what I do know makes me hate him. He famously tweeted, “Take the red pill”, leading Ivanka Trump to tweet approvingly, “Taken” and The Matrix co-director Lilly Wachowski to respond, epically, “Fuck both of you.”
At the time the tweet was seen as Musk endorsing the concept of being “red-pilled”, Alt-Right/MRA/Incel terminology for having your consciousness awakened to the true nature of a reality where POC and women and the LGTBQ community hold all the power and white straight christian men, particularly those with money and power, are persecuted relentlessly.
Musk laughably insisted that he did not mean anything politically by using this most loaded of phrases, telling Maureen Dowd that all he meant by it was, “ Accept reality as it is as opposed to what you wish it were. I think [Ivanka Trump] was interpreting it through more of a political lens than it was intended.”
That’s like wearing a red hat with the words “Make America Great Again” on it and then, when people naturally assume you support Donald Trump, insisting that it has nothing to do with him and that you just think that we should make America great again by investing heavily in science and infrastructure.
You know who would be a WAY better host than Elon Musk? AOC. She’s funny, smart, quick, charismatic, attractive and young and would guarantee great ratings and lots of publicity.
It would also piss off Conservatives convinced that Saturday Night Live is Marxist in its political orientation. They would see AOC on SNL as inherently political. They wouldn’t be wrong, necessarily, and clearly Lorne Michaels would never want to promote ideas like Socialism or the Green New Deal when he could be handing over the keys to his shows, for a week at least, to the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
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