The complicated political legacy of ‘Saturday Night Live’

In a book released next week, “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels addresses the show’s politics, saying “SNL” has never favored liberals or conservatives. “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels is quoted as saying in “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live” by Susan Morrison. “We have our biases. We have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”

Michaels’ insistence on impartiality will likely bring howls from conservatives, who have complained for decades that “SNL” has been a liberal viper pit, mocking right-wingers and taking it easy on the icons of the left.

‘It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,’ Michaels is quoted as saying.

In 2019, after the show ran a sketch satirizing one of his press conferences on border policy, President Donald Trump lashed out at its “Republican hit jobs,” vowing “retribution” for making fun of him. Over the years, conservatives have called for the show to be “put out of its misery” because of its political slant, suggesting the executive producer is either “stupid or a liar” for claiming the show is nonpolitical.

And progressives, of course, see “SNL” as their own playground. In a 2003 interview, then-head writer Tina Fey told a reporter“We have a liberal bias, obviously,” and her fellow progressives have never doubted her. This is why, when the show steps out of line and allows anti-woke celebrities like Shane Gillis to host, “SNL” fans react with horror — after Gillis’ hosting gig in 2024, one comedy writer said Michaels was “unfit … to run a major network show in 2024.”

“SNL” was forged in the post-Watergate leftism of the 1970s, an era when politicians were viewed with heightened scrutiny and distrust. Michaels and young progressive writers like Al Franken and Chevy Chase drove the show’s political conscience. Three days before the 1976 Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford election, the show simply replayed the speech in which Ford announced he would be pardoning Richard Nixon, which Michaels later listed as one of his proudest moments as the producer of the legendary comedy show.

But despite “SNL’s” progressive roots, a full review of the show’s history (which I have undertaken as part of a two-year podcast project called “Wasn’t That Special”) uncovers some truly inspired moments of traditional political conservatism.

In the show’s first sketch after Trump’s election in 2016, comedian Dave Chappelle’s character attends an election night party filled with fellow progressives. As the sketch proceeds, Chappelle’s white, New York City-based friends grow increasingly incredulous as election night progresses and Trump keeps winning states. Chappelle’s character, by contrast, simply laughs at how naive his liberal friends had been throughout the election year.

To conservatives, the sketch was an admission by the show that it had been operating in a liberal bubble, unable to see why support for Trump had been growing over the past year.

Or take, for example, a 1990 “Weekend Update” desk bit in which Chris Rock complains both about how much he hates taxes and how he doesn’t mind if prisons are uncomfortable for the inmates. (“Jails are so nice, they come back twice. … They don’t have this problem in Iran because it’s hard to snatch another purse if you don’t have another hand.”) A year later, Rock returned to support the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing him only of the crime of using bad pickup lines in the workplace.

An array of recurring characters in the show have mocked progressive activism. Eddie Murphy played a recurring character named Tyrone Green (first introduced in the famous “Prose and Cons” short film), an illiterate, poetry-writing prisoner who was regularly feted by New York’s rich elite. The whole series of sketches, in which rich progressives are harshly lampooned, has a strong Tom Wolfe-ean “Radical Chic” vibe to it.

Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person.

The show also had a particular sore spot for public sector employees. In March 2001, Maya Rudolph portrayed a sassy postal worker who has no time for customers, lending comfort to those who think customer service improves when privatization reigns. In 2010, a brutal sketch featured the “Public Employee of the Year Awards,” in which government workers were given awards for being surly and amassing outlandish benefits packages.

Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person. But those who complain about Tina Fey’s broad Palin impersonation also fail to mention a sketch from 2008 in which editors at The New York Times try to enlist their newsroom’s reporters to spend six weeks in Alaska to cover the vice presidential nominee.

The sketch savages the newsroom, portraying reporters as naive Manhattan elites who had never seen the real America. The reporters, confused about Alaska culture, wonder how they will get around without being able to call a cab, worry about polar bear attacks, and mistake a photo of a snowmobile for a “baptizing machine.”

But perhaps one of the most observant political sketches in show history ran just before the presidential election in 2016, when actor Tom Hanks joined in a performance of “Black Jeopardy!” It is assumed that Hanks, playing a red-hatted MAGA enthusiast, will embarrass himself when posed with questions (or “answers,” in “Jeopardy!” style) meant for Black contestants. Yet everyone is shocked when Hanks’ answers comport perfectly with “Black culture,” crystallizing something that had yet to be put into words — politics is a horseshoe, and Trump supporters had more in common with Black Americans than we all thought. (For instance, Hanks’ character, Doug, downplays the importance of voting, saying the outcome of elections are decided months ahead of time, anyway.)

Of course, the show hands plenty of ammo to Republicans who argue the show is hopelessly biased in favor of Democrats. When Trump won, cast members Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata all sang songs either bemoaning Clinton’s loss or mourning the end of the Barack Obama era.

But just a year earlier, “SNL” allowed Trump to host an episode while he was running for president. Trump hosted twice, eventually becoming the first president to have hosted the show. And who can forget the ratings-busting show when Palin finally showed up in Studio 8H? The New York Times even gave Palin a rave reviewcalling her “remarkable” and “delightful.”

Whatever your opinion of ‘SNL’s’ politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed.

Nonetheless, there is clearly a pattern in how Republicans are depicted on the show versus Democrats. Generally, GOP politicians lampooned by the show fall into a few select categories: Palin (stupid), George W. Bush (stupid), Dick Cheney (old, evil), George H.W. Bush (old, clueless), Dan Quayle (stupid), Bob Dole (old, clueless) and Trump (clueless, old, evil). And yet, one of the show’s most inspired political sketches featured Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan as a secret genius, which suggests the show perhaps should have inverted the formula more often.

Meanwhile, the show has regularly depicted Democrats as being too brainy for the presidency (Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore). Of course, Bill Clinton got the full treatment once his priapic activities threatened his presidency; his travails were simply too juicy a target to ignore. (Even Monica Lewinsky made an appearance on the show, in 1999.)

Whatever your opinion of “SNL’s” politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed. “Democrats tend to take it personally; Republicans think it’s funny,” he said in 2014. We will know if that’s true in 2025 if Michaels avoids a Trump-mandated prison term.