Voters gave America’s rudest man permission to return to the White House; what else have they given permission to? Michael Che has one idea. “So y’all gonna let a man with 34 felonies lead the free world and be the president of the United States?” he asked during last night’s “Weekend Update.” “That’s it. I’m listening to R. Kelly again.”
The joke captured a feeling that’s been circulating in America ever since last Tuesday’s election: silver-lining nihilism, a relief that we can stop trying to be good. Kamala Harris lost probably because of the economy, but the Republican campaign did effectively leverage widespread exhaustion with identity politics, inclusive speech, and perhaps even civility itself. Some of Trump’s supporters have celebrated by crowing vileness such as “Your body, my choice.” Some of Harris’s fans have openly denigrated the minorities who voted for Trump.
Eesh. But if this is, as my colleague Thomas Chatterton Williams posted on X, the “post-woke era,” then perhaps at least comedy—the entertainment form that’s grouched the most about progressive piety—will be funnier now. Maybe someone will channel the spirit of Joan Rivers in her prime, turning nastiness into a high art. But judging from last night’s SNL, we will not be so lucky.
The episode’s host, the comedian Bill Burr, seemed well positioned to interpret Trump’s win. With his Boston accent and stubbled beard, he has long drawn upon his white-working-class bona fides to critique both sides of the partisan divide. When he hosted SNL shortly before the 2020 presidential election, he mocked wokeness in a somewhat sneaky way: By accusing white women and gay people of hijacking the posture of oppression from people of color, he in effect co-opted the logic of intersectionality to call out its own excesses. Whether you were offended or amused by his monologue, it at least had a point.
Last night, however, Burr just seemed ornery. He opened with a promise to avoid talking about the election, and then said he’d just gotten over the flu. When you’re sick, he observed, you lie awake “just going through this Rolodex of people that coughed on you. Sniffled near ya. Walked by an Asian or something.” Smattered chuckles. “You try to fight it. You’re like, ‘They say on the internet that’s where all the disease comes from.’” Almost no laughs.
Eventually he got to the election. “All right, ladies you’re oh-and-two against this guy,” he said, referring to Harris’s and Hillary Clinton’s losses to Trump. “Ladies, enough with the pantsuit, okay? It’s not working. Stop trying to have respect for yourselves. You don’t win the office, like, on policy, you know? You gotta whore it up a little.” He added, “I know a lot of ugly women—feminists, I mean—don’t want to hear this message.”
Maybe in those oh-so-woke times a week ago, I’d feel compelled to spell out how repeating stereotypes about Asian people and reducing women to their looks effectively makes life harder for Asian people and women. Other pundits would have then defended Burr on the grounds that he’s mocking his own racism and America’s sexism. Let’s skip all that and agree that Burr’s attempt to push the line of acceptability led him to bomb in a way that was horrible to watch. He created the same sucking feeling that Tony Hinchcliffe did when he made an arena of MAGAs groan at the idea that Puerto Rico is floating garbage. There’s no wit, no passion, no aha to this kind of comedy. It’s just guys flailing about for a reaction.
To be fair, Burr might have just been tired. This election cycle “took forever,” even though most voters made up their mind long ago, he complained. Their choices were two “polar opposite” candidates: “It’s like, ‘Let’s see. What does the orange bigot have to say? How about the real-estate agent that speaks through her nose?’” (“Orange bigot”—is this The View in 2015?)
The rest of the episode was a bit better than the monologue. Burr’s presence pushed the writers to focus on sketches about masculinity, an apt subject given the role that male voters played in the election. A segment in which young guys tried to get their dads to open up about their feelings by talking about sports and cars was oddly touching. A bit featuring a self-pitying bro at group therapy was amusingly deranged. In the edgiest sketch, Burr played a fire fighter with a fetish involving children’s cartoons, leading SNL to air an image of the dad from Bluey in a ball gag. Was this post-woke Hollywood vulgarity or what comedy’s always been—the search for surprise?
The truth that SNL and the culture at large must now wrestle with is this: Trump may be back in office after four years away, but the world only turns forward. Wokeness has not been some fad; it hasn’t even been a movement that can be defeated. It’s been, as the term itself implies, an awakening—reshaping how people think about the relationship between the words they use and the society they live in. The case it made was so persuasive that it altered the English language likely forever. It also spread shame and overreached in a way that created backlash—but that backlash will cause cultural changes that build off what we just lived through, not reverse it entirely. The way to fully get back to a pre-woke time would be through actual Orwellian fascism.
SNL isn’t counting that possibility out. Last night opened with the cast members speaking to the camera, telling Trump that they’d supported him all along, that they shouldn’t be on an enemies list, and that they’ll help him hunt down any colleagues who voted for Harris. Their tone was light but the satire was dark, highlighting the way that leaders—in politics, media, and business—who were once critical of Trump have taken to flattering him out of fear of retribution. The sketch anticipated a future that would make recent speech wars look quaint. But for now, as for long before, we can say what we want to say, not only what we think we should say.
theatlantic.com