Lifestyle
‘SNL’ has always taken on politics. Here’s what works – and why
Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton, and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton during the “A Hillary Christmas” sketch on December 19, 2015.
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As a comedy nerd who has watched Saturday Night Live since I stumbled on a rerun of the debut episode back in the mid-1970s, I’m convinced SNL has had a profound impact on how America views politics.
But the show has seemingly struggled in recent years, as the absurdity of modern politics has caught up to satire. Former president Donald Trump’s references to myths about Haitian immigrants eating pets, his running mate JD Vance’s comments about women without children, Vice President Kamala Harris having to defend stories about working at McDonald’s as a youth – it all seems like stuff which would have been in sketches years ago, instead of real life.
As a historic election looms, and the show begins its landmark 50th season this week, SNL faces an ongoing challenge: to make America laugh – and think differently – about a political world which has gotten stranger than anyone could have predicted when the show debuted back in 1975.
Already, the show’s been on summer hiatus for the year’s three most seismic political events: President Joe Biden’s terrible debate performance against former president Donald Trump, Biden’s eventual decision to step aside for Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris’ domineering debate performance against Trump. So they’ll need to hit the ground running Saturday, when comic actor Jean Smart hosts the show.
A political impact from the beginning
I decided to bounce some of my harebrained theories about SNL’s impact over time off Al Franken, who wrote some of the show’s earliest political skits and worked there for many years as a writer and performer, before serving nearly ten years as a U.S. senator from Minnesota.
(Franken resigned from the Senate in 2018 amid allegations of misconduct from several women who accused him of touching or kissing them in inappropriate ways. He has denied some allegations, said he remembers others differently, apologized for making some women feel uncomfortable and said he regrets resigning the office.)
When it came to political satire, Franken says he and his fellow SNL writers had a pretty simple goal: Craft stuff that would be funny for people who knew both a little – and a lot – about politics.
“We didn’t try to be liberal or conservative,” says Franken, who worked on the show in various stints from 1975, during its very first season, to 1995, helping write classic sketches featuring Dan Aykroyd as President Richard Nixon during his last days in office and Dana Carvey as both George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in a debate.
Quoting another legendary SNL writer, Jim Downey, he adds, “We just tried to do stuff…that would reward people for knowing stuff, but not punish them for not…Sketches that would be funny to everyone, but we were also trying to put in things that, really, really, smart people could go, ‘Oh I see. They put that in there for me.’”
SNL shapes our view of politicians through impressions
When Saturday Night Live nails an impression of a politician, it manages a unique alchemy – elevating the thing about that person that is so funny it can pretty much define them in the public’s mind. Often, it is something people already suspected about the politician, crystallizing how the public feels about their policies or candidacies.
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When John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, Tina Fey produced a devastating take on the vice-presidential candidate as a superficial dimwit given to folksy-sounding word salads in speeches and interviews. Some people even assumed the politician actually said “I can see Russia from my house” – one of the jokes Fey’s Palin announces during a speech that the real Palin never said.
Think Gerald Ford was a clumsy dolt? That might be because that’s how Chevy Chase played him in the show’s first season, even though Ford was a former champion athlete. Aykroyd handled Nixon and Jimmy Carter – nailing Nixon’s shifty villany and Carter’s wide smile and youth appeal, despite wearing a mustache neither politician had. Dana Carvey’s take on George H.W. Bush as a stiff patrician given to flailing his arms widely also led people to confuse Carvey’s jokes with things the real-life president said and did.
And there was Darrell Hammond’s take on Al Gore during a debate sketch in 2000, playing Gore as an oblivious technocrat obsessed with the word “lockbox” to a crushing effect. “I think [that sketch] elected Bush,” says Franken, recalling how Gore’s team reportedly used the sketch to coach the vice president on future debate performances.
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But sometimes impressions aren’t enough
Because so much of the show’s political insight comes from impressions, it creates problems when SNL can’t find the right approach. The show never really found a great caricature of Joe Biden, despite having everyone from Jason Sudeikis to Woody Harrelson and Jim Carrey play him.
When I say they had similar problems with Barack Obama, Franken agrees. “[It] was like trying to climb a smooth, vertical wall,” he says of lampooning Obama. “He had nothing to really grab onto. You could do an impression of his voice … but there [weren’t] really a lot of footholds there.”
The problem with Donald Trump may be the opposite: too many footholds. Alec Baldwin nailed Trump’s scowling self-obsession, while James Austin Johnson captures the former president’s stream of consciousness patter, though finding things funnier or more absurd than what he’s actually done in real life remains a challenge.
This weekend, though Maya Rudolph seems ready to nail Harris’ coolly efficient power, the question remains: who will play crucial figures like Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and his GOP opposite JD Vance – and what will those impressions say about our politics writ large? (My money’s on a “cold open” Saturday focused on Walz and Vance prepping for the vice presidential debate.)
Helping the audience process political ideas beyond impressions
There have been impactful SNL sketches which speak to political ideas beyond lampooning politicians, often in the name of helping the audience process potent ideas.
One of my favorites is a bit from 2016, where Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock are sitting in an election watch party surrounded by white people. As Trump’s election is confirmed, the white folks are shocked that America elected a candidate with such obvious race and sexism issues, while Rock and Chappelle – as Black men familiar with America’s hypocrisies – are not.
When politicians appear as themselves
Particularly before the rise of social media, the best way a politician could try to get ahead of how SNL portrayed them was to appear as themselves in the show’s sketches. Obama, Palin, Hillary Clinton, and even Nikki Haley used this tactic, popping up to look like good sports while pushing back subtly against the most insulting parts of the parodies.
McCain, who called Saturday Night Live creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels a friend, delivered one of the most notable cameos. He kicked off the SNL episode right before the presidential election in November 2008 with an appearance where the senator – flanked by Fey as Palin and his actual wife, Cindy – hawked fake merchandise on the QVC home shopping channel, deftly presaging when Trump would do it for real with his own Bibles and luxury watches.
But one of the most infamous political cameos is also the show’s earliest, when Ron Nessen, then press secretary for Ford, hosted the show in 1976 and got his boss to pre-tape saying the show’s legendary opening phrase, “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night.”
Franken says he impulsively asked Nessen to host the show at an event for Ford – later, he says, Michaels reminded him that handing out host invites was not his job – but they didn’t really ease up on the president for the episode. “We had way too much fun with them and the Ford family was not appreciative,” Franken adds. “And I think right after that he lost in South Carolina to Reagan…They hated it.”
Leigh McDaniel always knew she was destined to become a witch. Growing up in Hawaii, she came from a long line of “kitchen witches,” she explains — women who intuited measurements, spices and when a cake was done from the next room. “There was always a part of me that was like: Yeah, I’m a witch,” says McDaniel from her California sun-soaked studio.
Today, McDaniel — who calls herself a “womb witch”— practices a different kind of magic: pelvic care bodywork. Based in a bright studio in Glendale, McDaniel serves clients of all genders. Before each session, McDaniel invites clients to share their personal histories, and then McDaniel performs bodywork through touch as sage smoke curls in the air.
“A person who left today had their first session and was like, ‘I’m so much lighter in my body,’” McDaniel says.
McDaniel’s work is rooted in holistic pelvic health and touch therapy, which she discovered after giving birth to her second child at age 46. Before her daughter was born, McDaniel says she met her in a dream. The child introduced herself as “Luna.” The name stuck. After her birth, McDaniel theorized that her daughter had “reorganized her pelvic bowl.” When she sought out answers from her midwife and OB-GYN, they were dismissive; the experience prompted her to explore alternative care.
“It sent me down a few rabbit holes,” McDaniel says. “Previously, I had studied naturopathy with the intention of going to a naturopathic school — herbalism, Reiki and light touch therapy.”
Leigh McDaniel says that after one session her clients often feel an immediate shift in their bodies.
(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)
While body wisdom and alternative healing are framed as part of the Goop-conscious modern wellness movement, McDaniel explains that these practices are not new. She cites Ubuntu, a South African philosophy that informs her healing approach. “Indigenous practices knew how to hold people in trauma,” she says. “We’re only just beginning to figure it out.”
After an explanation of the nervous system, consent and the pelvic floor, her sessions begin with McDaniel burning sage or mugwort while the client is on the table. She asks for consent before touching the client and offers a prayer or blessing. McDaniel explains she’s feeling for energy before moving on to the abdomen, where she applies various levels of pressure. She compares it to a guided meditation as she incorporates breathwork while asking clients to breathe into her fingers. She emphasizes that the client controls the pace and asks for consent at each step.
“I think consent and boundaries are so critical to taking care of your body,” she says.
The intimate nature of McDaniel’s practice has garnered attention — and occasional skepticism. Comedian Ali Macofsky, for example, says with a smile, “I go in person to this womb witch,” on “The Endless Honeymoon” podcast. The hosts are baffled and intrigued. Macofsky adds, “It feels very old school the way women have to go through things.”
Macofsky discovered Leigh through actor and comedian Syd Steinberg who highly recommended her work. “I went to help with some CPTSD [complex post-traumatic stress disorder] and TMJ [temporomandibular joint] pain and she helped,” says Steinberg. “She really is a miracle worker.”
Macofsky was intrigued by the whimsical title of “Womb Witch.” “I was like, I’ll make an appointment and see what happens.” After a phone call, McDaniel explained that she helped clients with physical intimacy and sexual trauma through bodywork. The comedian was hooked.
Macofsky notes that in a culture where female pleasure is not prioritized, it’s hard to know where to seek advice. After a session with Leigh where she discussed advocating for oneself sexually, Macofsky began to see the results take hold in surprising ways. “It’s helping me in other areas where normally I’d be uncomfortable to advocate for myself or speak up about what I want.”
Clients seek out the womb witch for a variety of reasons. Some report physical discomfort during sexual encounters, while others come after experiencing sexual assault, abuse or consent violation. At other times, clients may experience stiffness or pain that McDaniel believes may be a reaction to trauma.
Her session also focuses on sexual health. McDaniel gives her clients a tutorial on pleasure anatomy and consent, most recently teaching sexual health lessons to a gathering in Silver Lake. “I like to show a lot about the pleasure anatomy, the mobility of the uterus, and where the cervix is at different times of the month,” she explains.
McDaniel argues that pleasure is an important part of daily life. “Female pleasure is finally being noticed,” she says. “Pleasure is a birthright. There’s pleasure and there’s grief. To be full-spectrum humans, we need to be feeling pleasure.” McDaniel cites that recent studies claim the clitoris has 10,000 nerve endings.
Leigh McDaniel holds a bowl of coconut and castor oil that she often uses with clients.
(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)
McDaniel says that everyday stress — including sexual harassment and misogyny — manifests in the body, often leading to chronic pain. “In patriarchy, the comments land in your body, and you find yourself bracing every time you pass them,” she says. “They can seem so small and harmless, but even those little things add up. They’re felt. It’s part of feeling unsafe in the world.”
Though many people struggle to navigate the American healthcare system, more Americans are turning to a spiritual wellness approach. The National Institutes of Health reports that holistic care methods such as meditation, acupuncture and yoga have grown significantly in recent years. Ancient Chinese medicine techniques have gone viral on TikTok, capturing the attention of Gen Z. “People are more willing to look outside the Western medicine model,” McDaniel explains. “I have people that come here to see me because of medical trauma too.”
Dr. Tanaz R. Ferzandi, director of urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery at Keck Medicine of USC, believes that holistic medicine can be a potent adjunct to more traditional remedies. She has recommended acupuncture to her patients who have experienced sexual trauma. “The whole idea of acupuncture is you’re lying there, and coming to peace with yourself and your body,” she explains. “It’s a forced therapy where you can be alone with yourself and shut out the rest of the world.”
Simultaneously, Ferzandi believes a healthy amount of skepticism is good. “We have to stay scientific — what’s the evidence behind it? As long as women understand that we don’t know if there’s data to support some of the things they’re doing,” she says. “I’m very cautious about touting certain things that are somehow going to be a panacea.”
McDaniel’s explains its rare she encounters skeptics at her practice. “I never try to convince anyone to come in for a session,” she says. “There are scientific studies on the efficacy of different types of work that are adjacent to, or similar to what I do, but nothing exact.”
She acknowledges elements of her work are difficult to quantify. “There is also a mysterious space between bodies, the client and myself, where something happens that I cannot really explain, but it feels magical,” she says. “I don’t think any of this would convince anyone who is inherently skeptical though.”
McDaniel views her daughter Luna’s birth as the inciting incident into her true calling — becoming the “Womb Witch.” “Everything that happened to my own body after her birth, it was a calling to do this,” she says. “I’ve done so many things, and this is the first time I really feel settled in what I do.”
You want to see some real fashion ingenuity? Watch the N.F.L. draft.
I’m not saying it’s all good, but where else are you going to see someone in a double-breasted suit made by a company better known for making yoga pants? Or an Abercrombie & Fitch suit jacket so short that it exposes the belt loops on the pants beneath?
On the whole, the style on display at the N.F.L. draft last night was very overeager senior formal: a lot of suits in colors beyond basic blue. The quarterback Ty Simpson wore a custom suit by the athleisure label Alo, which, I have to say, looked better than I would have envisioned had you said the words “Alo Yoga suit” to me.
I thought it might have been from Suitsupply, but the conspicuous “Alo” pin on his right lapel put that idea to rest. Simpson, smartly, unfastened that beacon before appearing onstage as the 13th pick to the Los Angeles Rams. He had, perhaps, satisfied his contractual obligations by that point.
Earlier in the evening, as the wide receiver Carnell Tate threw up his arms in exaltation after being picked fourth by the Tennessee Titans, his cropped Abercrombie & Fitch jacket revealed a swatch of rib cage. He looked like a mâitre d’ who had just hit the Mega Millions.
During the N.B.A.’s extended fashion awakening, its draft has become a sandbox for luxury brands to cozy up to would-be endorsers. The Frenchman Victor Wembanyama broke a kind of cashmere ceiling when he wore Louis Vuitton to go first overall in the 2023 N.B.A. draft.
The N.F.L. draft has none of that. The brands you see are often not brands at all, but custom tailors that reach the league’s neophytes through a whisper network among players. The draft is also a platform to raise the curtain on longer-term brand deals that better suit these rookies. We may, for instance, never see Simpson in a suit again. Nearly every photo from his time at Alabama shows him in a T-shirt or hoodie. It makes sense for him to sign with Alo.
Football is the most mainstream of American cultural entities. And it’s one that still hasn’t, in spite of the league’s best efforts, taken off overseas. Few players, save some quarterbacks and a tight end who happens to be engaged to a pop star, feel bigger than the game itself. If you’re a new-to-the-league linebacker, you’ll most likely never harness the star power to grab the attention of Armani, but you might have just the right pull for Abercrombie.
The N.F.L. draft is therefore one of the few red carpets where the brands worn by the athletes may also be worn by those watching at home. How many people watching the Oscars will ever own clothes from Louis Vuitton or Chanel? People may comment online about Lady Gaga wearing Matières Fécales to the Grammys, but how many of those fans and viewers could afford to buy clothes from it?
The Japanese designers changing fashion
Yesterday, I published a deep dive into how a newish crop of Japanese designers are soaking up all the attention in men’s fashion right now. This was a piece I was writing in my head long before I sat down and finally started typing. I remember sitting at a fashion show in Paris over a year ago — I believe it was Dior — and being asked by my seatmate if I’d made it over to a showroom in the Marais to check out A.Presse. That Tokyo-based brand is now part of a vanguard of Japanese labels that, on many days, seems to be all anyone in fashion wants to talk about. I spent months talking with designers, store owners and big-time shoppers to make sense of why these brands have kicked up so much buzz and, more than that, what makes their clothes so great. You can read the story here.
Other things worth knowing about:
Thirty years ago, comedian and actor Tig Notaro didn’t have a clear direction in life, so she followed some childhood friends who wanted to get into entertainment to Los Angeles. Secretly wanting to do stand-up, Notaro decided to try her luck at various outlets in town, which became the start of her successful career.
“I stayed on my friends’ couch near the Hollywood Improv on Melrose, and a couple months later, got my own studio apartment in the Miracle Mile area,” Notaro says. “I love all the options for everything in L.A. — the entertainment, the restaurants. I like to stay active. So many people love the hiking options in Los Angeles, and I’m one of them.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Notaro appears in Season 3 of Apple TV’s “The Morning Show” and is a series regular on Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” as she was on “Star Trek: Discovery.” She’s also a touring stand-up comic and hosts “Handsome,” a comedy podcast, with Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin. The trio will be taping a live show May 4 at the Wiltern with the cast of Netflix’s “The Hunting Wives.” The live shows include interviews, but also “incorporate some ridiculous things,” she says. For example, upon hearing that some of the hosts always wanted to learn to tap dance, Notaro “hired a tap instructor to come to our live show in Austin and teach us how to tap dance in front of the audience.”
Notaro lives near Hollywood with her wife, actor Stephanie Allynne, their 9-year-old fraternal twin boys, Max and Finn, and three cats, Fluff, Linus and Skip. When she’s not touring, her ideal Sundays include sampling vegan restaurants, wandering through bookstores or museums, and doing something physically active with the family.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
6 a.m.: Up with the kids
Because we have active children, we still wake up at 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, but there’s not as much of a rush to get going. Stephanie and I will often have coffee and chat in the living room together. I love that part of the day. Stephanie may cook breakfast, but Max and Finn are pretty self-sufficient and can make certain little meals for themselves. Max is really starting to take an interest in cooking, so he’d make breakfast for himself. Our family is vegan, but he eats eggs, so he makes himself an egg sandwich with avocado a lot of times.
9 a.m.: Daily morning walk
After breakfast, we usually have a morning walk around our neighborhood. That’s a daily thing I like to do, regardless of what’s going on. Now that I’m not touring as much, tennis is back on the schedule. So I’d go to Plummer Park in West Hollywood and play for a while, then join the family for lunch.
11:30 a.m.: Hike with a side of chickpea sandwich
I love Trails, a cafe in Griffith Park, where you can eat outdoors. It serves simple food, and has good vegan options. I usually get their chickpea salad sandwich. The food there is great. Afterward, we’d visit Griffith Observatory, where there’s lots to see. There are lots of great trails in the park, so we’d go for an hour hike before leaving.
3 p.m.: Browse the shelves for rock biographies
Bookstores are fun, so we’d head downtown for the Last Bookstore, which is in a historic building with lots of vintage books. I really love all things plant-based, and I’m a very big music fanatic. So I love to look for vegan books, nutrition books, rock biographies and autobiographies. It’s just fun to browse around the stacks.
If we didn’t go to the bookstore, we’d probably go to LACMA. Our sons are huge fans of art and want to go for each new exhibit. They love Hockney, Basquiat and Picasso, to name a few.
4 p.m.: Cuddle with cuties at a cat cafe
We’d then make a quick stop at [Crumbs & Whiskers], a kitten and cat cafe on Melrose for coffee, snacks and to pet the cats. It’s best to make reservations in advance. There’s cats all around the place that need to be adopted. You can visit and pet them, or find a new roommate. I’d love to take some home, but we already have three.
5:30 p.m. Italian or sushi, but make it vegan
We’re an early dinner family. One restaurant we like is Pura Vita in West Hollywood. It’s the greatest vegan Italian food, and for non-vegans, nobody ever knows the difference. It’s the first 100% plant-based Italian restaurant in the United States. They make an incredible kale salad and I love the San Gennaro pizza. It’s got cashew mozzarella, tomato sauce, Italian sausage crumble and more.
Then there’s Planta in Marina del Rey. It’s right on the harbor and you can sit outside and look at the boats coming in and out. They have sushi, salads and other plant-based entrees. They’ve got a really great spicy tuna roll that’s made out of watermelon. They are magicians.
Or there’s Crossroads Kitchen in West Hollywood. They play the best classic rock, and the atmosphere is upscale, fine dining. The appetizers that we always get are called Moroccan Cigars, which are vegan meat substitutes fried in a rolled batter. I really like the grilled lion’s mane steak, their mushroom steak with truffle potatoes, or the scallopini Milanese, that has a chicken or tofu option. I get the chicken with arugula on top. I always love to have a decaf espresso with dessert, which is either a brownie sundae or banana pudding.
7:30 p.m.: Comfort watch or word games
After dinner, the kids often like to watch an episode of “Friends,” a show that all ages enjoy, sports or “The Simpsons.” Or we’d play a game where each of us will add a word to a sentence and create a weird or funny long sentence until one of our sons says period. Then they’ll try and remember the whole sentence and repeat it back.
9:30 p.m.: Bubble bath then bed
The boys usually go to bed at 8:30 p.m. and bedtime for us is 9:30 p.m. Stephanie and I would read or chat. I like to take a bubble bath, if people must know. The best Sundays for me mean finding a good balance of relaxing and being active. I feel very lucky that my family and I can do those things together.
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