SNL Still Most Progressive Show Trump Hosted During Campaign

Saturday Night Live gets a lot of flack from all sides, but FLEXX is here to set the record straight: of all the shows that Donald Trump hosted while he was running for president, we believe none is more progressive than SNL.

Sure, you could say there are hard-hitting progressive television programs that take Trump to task more effectively than SNL does. You might even say that putting a squinting Alec Baldwin in a wig doesn't amount to criticism at all, and if anything it makes people comfortable with laughing at Trump rather than opposing him.

You could say that, but that would be unfair. SNL shouldn't be compared to shows with coherent belief systems. What ever happened to nuance? Doesn't anybody care about context? 

The only fair approach is to consider where SNL stands within its own category: shows that gleefully promoted Trump’s campaign with a hosting gig when they thought it would get them ratings. Within that group, SNL’s collection of half-assed carnival parody acts might as well be Antifa.

Take the Kavanaugh hearings. Other television programs might have done searing critiques of how privileged white men like to fake victimhood when it suits them, even while real victims are pushed aside to protect them. It might seem pathetic that instead, SNL brought on Matt Damon to drink a lot of water, say “beer” a lot of times, and list off funny names. The untrained eye might think SNL has no ethos whatsoever, and was essentially putting a clown nose on the face of fascism. But think about it this way: out of all the shows that helped Trump win the election, and are therefore complicit in a sexual assaulter becoming a justice on the Supreme Court, who did a better job? Nobody, that’s who.

Get those folks another Emmy.