‘SNL’ under fire for ‘embarrassing’ skit focusing on GOP lawmaker instead of college presidents' testimony
Rabbi Shmuel Reichman told Fox News Digital that ‘SNL’ is proof ‘comedians are no longer able to be funny’ in the cancel culture era.
NBC’s "Saturday Night Live" was widely criticized over the weekend after the show’s cold open spoofed Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., instead of the controversial testimony of the college presidents about antisemitism on their campuses.
Rabbi Shmuel Reichman, author of "The Journey to Your Ultimate Self," believes the "embarrassing" skit is proof that liberal ideology has become both hypocritical and toxic.
"What we have, basically, here is one of the most fascinating expressions of a complete breakdown of morality, but also a real expression of what postmodernism has become," Reichman told Fox News Digital.
SNL GETS BLOWBACK FOR 'VILE' SKIT FOCUSING ON GOP LAWMAKER INSTEAD OF COLLEGE PRESIDENTS' TESTIMONY
NBC’s "Saturday Night Live" was widely criticized over the weekend after the show’s cold open spoofed a GOP lawmaker instead of the controversial testimony of the college presidents who have come under fire for downplaying antisemitism on campuses.
Last week, Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill faced significant backlash for dodging questions about whether calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools' codes of conduct during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing.
Stefanik grilled the college presidents during what Reichman called the "worst congressional hearing in U.S. history."
Magill has resigned since the hearing, while Gay and Kornbluth have faced calls to also step aside. In the NBC variety show’s parody of the hearing, the primary target appeared to be the Republican lawmaker.
"’SNL’ chooses to make fun of Elise Stefanik instead of actually calling out what is perhaps the funniest and most egregious violation of the postmodern philosophy for the past decade," Reichman said.
Reichman described postmodernism as "essentially the breakdown of truth and reality" and all structure and principles. He said people who associate with postmodernism feel religion is "outdated" and want to break down everything from patriarchy and religion in order to usher in a "new thought of utopian society, socialism, bringing in the best of the limited life you have in this world and not pretending like they can have an afterlife."
Rep. Elise Stefanik speaks during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
"It's the unspoken new religion, the new cult, the new in-ideology of postmodernism," Reichman said, noting that the transgender movement is a good example because it breaks down the notion of male and female.
"Now, for the past decade, what the left has done is they've weaponized speech. They said that if you use the wrong pronoun, if you say something that hurt someone's feelings because they identify in some way, and you have violated their internal identity, even though it's impossible to play a game because people can choose their identity every single day and there's no way to actually structure that legally," Reichman said.
"They have weaponized that in order to further the agenda of breaking down the path, breaking down history, breaking down tradition, breaking down religion, and bringing in a new era of thought," he continued. "It's hypocritical. It makes no sense."
He said that people have been canceled, and careers have been destroyed, simply for expressing something that someone else found to be offense all because it gets in the way of this "new frontier."
"Now, why has the left come out against Israel for the past couple of months? Because Israel represents the left's worst nightmare. Israel is a religious democracy, and the left wants to do away with religion, with essentially any structured tradition of ideas," Reichman said.
"So, you have a congressional hearing which basically asks the president, ‘You've been weaponizing speech for the past 10 years. Anything that's offensive has been seen as wrong, morally wrong, you know, within the cancel culture, you're out,’" he continued. "And yet people are actively calling for the genocide of the Jewish people. They're calling for the death of Jews. They're trying to basically continue the Holocaust. And we're seeing implicit support, explicit support from the university system itself. What is happening?"
Reichman, who suggested the college presidents were most likely trained by lawyers, was stunned they said "context" is critical when determining if calling for genocide of the Jewish people violated school guidelines. The school leaders also suggested that rhetoric would need to turn into conduct to be punishable.
"If someone said something that violated one person's feelings in the transgender arena, that would be seen as the most egregious moral offense and yet calling for the death of Jews -- it depends on the context," he said. "It has to turn into conduct… an absolute hypocrisy in the entire ideology and philosophy of weaponizing speech and saying that speech equals a micro-offense."
Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
As for NBC’s "SNL," Reichman feels it had an opportunity to call out the absurd truth and point out ridiculous hypocrisy, which he says is the true essence of comedy in the first place. Instead, he said the show has become a "megaphone of the agenda" and chose to mock Stefanik instead of lampooning the hypocrisy of the school presidents.
"What ‘SNL’ had an opportunity to do was to actually be funny. But they turned it to the funniest and saddest expression of the death of comedy, which is what's happening all around. Comedians are no longer able to be funny, that’s the cancel culture," he said.
"Unless you say what is within the line of the alt-left realm of what is true, you cannot actually express what you believe is true, which is a hypocrisy because the transgender movement and alt-left movement is the expression that there is no truth, so you can say whatever you want, but then it's only you can say whatever you want within what we think is true -- so they basically take an ownership of a truth," Reichman continued, adding that he felt the skit was hysterical for all the wrong reasons.
"We are basically seeing the funniest and most explicit display of the complete breakdown of truth, the complete breakdown of the postmodern ideology, the complete breakdown of comedy, and ‘SNL’ basically losing any credibility it has left of trying to actually be funny," he said. "No one watches it anyways, but it was funny and that's why it went viral of people seeing just how sad the left agenda has become."
NBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Stefanik didn’t see the skit, according to her office.
"Elise did not watch it. However, her office was flooded with messages from thousands of Americans across the political spectrum - Democrats and Republicans - who were appalled and disgusted by the antisemitic trash spewed by unfunny, morally bankrupt ‘comedians," Alex DeGrasse, Senior Advisor to Chairwoman Stefanik, told Fox News Digital.
"’SNL’ made history with the worst cold open ever because everyone knows there is absolutely no humor in the vile answers from the university presidents regarding their failure to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jewish people," DeGrasse continued.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.