‘Cancel culture has drifted over to comedy,’ podcaster says
Comedian Adam Carolla said Monday that shows like “Saturday Night Live” were “scared” to attack Democrats like President Joe Biden or New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for fear of being “cancelled.”
In the first episode since Biden took office, the sketch comedy show largely skipped his administration, instead doing segments or bits celebrating Georgia turning blue, skewering controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and even rehashing the 2017 assault of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“Honestly, I get what there is to hate about Donald Trump,” Carolla said on “America’s Newsroom.” “What is there to love about Joe Biden? That’s the bigger question if you’re SNL. OK, you hated Trump, fine. Why do you love Joe Biden? There’s nothing to love about Joe Biden, unless you’re scared of being cancelled, and the fact that this cancel culture has drifted over to comedy is absolutely insane.”
SNL left little doubt during the 2020 election that it preferred Biden to win, and it even referred to his inauguration this month as good news during its “Weekend Update” segment.
Cuomo’s nursing home scandal was also left untouched by the show. Cuomo has come under fire for underreporting nursing home deaths from coronavirus over the past year, according to a report from the state’s Attorney General Letitia James.
“No comedians are saying anything about Governor [Gavin] Newsom or Governor Cuomo. Where are the comedians? They’re scared, and that’s a scary place to be,” Carolla said.
“Unfortunately, their hand is forced now,” he added. “They have to show their hypocrisy … You’ve done 7,000 episodes on what an idiot Trump is, and then you don’t touch the next administration? I would do one even if I loved Biden if I’m SNL, just so I don’t appear hypocritical.”
The first SNL of 2021 was panned by the Los Angeles Times, as critic Lorraine Ali wrote that Donald Trump had potentially killed satire.
“If Trump has had one victory in the the last month, it may be that ‘SNL’ suddenly seems lost without him,” she wrote.
The show famously mourned Trump’s victory in 2016, having Hillary Clinton impersonator Kate McKinnon do a serious rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in its first cold open after the election.
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.