"Why did it take so long for Shane Gillis to be fired from SNL?"/ "SNL embraces it's new-found relevance"

 Sept. 26, 2019 "Why did it take so long for Shane Gillis to be fired from SNL?": Today I found this article by Tony Wong in the Star Metro:

Unlike some folk, I didn’t hold out much hope that comedian Shane Gillis would be fired from “Saturday Night Live” — despite referring to Chinese as “f-king ch-ks” in a podcast, while mocking Chinese accents and making homophobic jokes.

The “SNL” crew went back to work this week to start the 45th season of the Emmy Award-winning sketch comedy show. Gillis was one of three new cast members announced this month. That includes the groundbreaking announcement that one of the new hires would be the first Chinese-american cast member, Bowen Yang.

But in the five days from the first tweet alerting producers of “SNL” to the time Gillis was let go, I couldn’t help wonder: How fast would he have been fired if he said the N-word? And why the double standard?

Imagine if “Saturday Night Live” had just hired their first Black American comic and Gillis was caught saying “f-king n---ers” on tape, would there be any doubt he would out the door?

Admittedly, writing this after the revelation that the Canadian prime minister wore blackface seems almost quaint. Not to excuse the cringeworthy cluelessness of Justin Trudeau, but Gillis aired his podcast in 2018 when the world was, hopefully, a little more woke.

But my issue isn’t with the firing of Gillis. It’s what happened after. Gillis posted a statement saying, “I understood it would be too much of a distraction,” after the firing, which was not exactly an act of contrition. 

Before that he said in a nonapology that he would offer an apology to “anyone who’s actually offended” by anything he said.

In the wake of the firing, the defenders came running to the door. Former “SNL” cast member Rob Schneider posted: “I am sorry you had the misfortune of being a cast member during this era of cultural unforgiveness.” 

Canadian comic Norm Macdonald said in a pinned tweet that the firing was “unacceptable” and “This means war.”

And someone who should know better, CNN’S Don Lemon, while acknowledging Gillis was being offensive, weighed in with: “I really hate cancel culture and boycott culture … everyone says stupid things, everyone does something that’s boneheaded. We have to be more forgiving.”

Sure, but what if Gillis had said the N-word? Comparing racial slurs — pitting the legacy of injustice to different racial groups against each other, whether it was slavery in the U.S. or a head tax in Canada — is not the answer. 

But one thing is clear: both words hurt. And they’re the worst thing you can say about either race. So what gives?

Professor Lorne Foster, director at York University’s Institute for Social Research, offers some context: “The United States has a unique dialectic” between Black and white, he says. “Because of the legacy of slavery, other marginalized groups are not part of that Black and white narrative and often their issues go unnoticed so they get shut out of the conversation.”

Asians, certainly of an earlier generation, are also used to turning the other cheek — valuing, like my parents, harmony not dissonance, even if it meant personal sacrifice.

“Asians are still punching bags, largely because we don’t speak out and we are perceived as doing well, which becomes part of the model-minority myth,” says Dora Nipp, CEO of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario.

Oct. 11, 2019 "SNL embraces it's new-found relevance": Today I found this article by Bethonie Butler in the Edmonton Journal:

Last weekend, SNL led by example with a sketch that was legitimately boundary- pushing — and hilarious. The episode’s strongest bit, Mid- Day News imagined staffers of a daytime Florida newscast enthusiastically guessing whether the alleged criminals in their news reports were black or white. The antics began when an anchor played by Ego Nwodim reported that a gas station had been robbed earlier that morning.

“And we’re told the suspect remains at large, but authorities now believe they have a credible description of the perp,” said her co- anchor, host Phoebe Waller Bridge. “The suspect, described as a white male ...”

“Woo!” Kenan Thompson interrupted. “Love it!” Nwodim shouted. Waller- Bridge and another co-anchor, played by Alex Moffat, looked confused. “I’m sorry, what are you two celebrating?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing. We’re just glad that we know what the criminal looks like,” Thompson replied. He leaned toward Nwodim, dropping his voice to a hushed tone: “And he ain’t one of us.”

Moffat’s anchor then reported on a multibillion- dollar Ponzi scheme targeting wealthy Miami residents. “That’s one of y’all, for sure,” Nwodim said as Moffat detailed the “egregious white- collar crime.”

“It’s right there in the name,” Nwodim teased. But her glee turned to disappointment when the screen flashed to a picture of the suspect. “And look at that,” Moffat said smugly. “He’s black.”

The competition escalated from there. Even the station’s weatherman ( Chris Redd) got in on the game while tracking the path of a hurricane dubbed Chet.

“Now that’s a white man’s name if I’ve ever heard one,” he said.

The kicker, which found Waller- Bridge and Moffat conceding defeat after a report about “a man dressed as the Joker,” concluded the sketch with a timely chef’s kiss that added Mid- Day News to a roster of sharp racial send- ups from SNL’s increasingly diverse writing staff. 

( In a tweet, senior writer Bryan Tucker credited Redd, Nwodim, and SNL co- head-writer Michael Che — the first black person to hold that title — with writing Mid- Day News.)

As Saturday Night Live incorporates new voices both onscreen and off, the show’s ability to subvert racial stereotypes in unexpected ways has led to some of its strongest sketches, often overshadowing — or elevating — SNL’s political humour.

One obvious example is Black Jeopardy, the recurring sketch that quizzes characters, played by carefully chosen guest hosts, on black culture. When Tom Hanks hosted ahead of the

2016 presidential election, SNL tweaked the sketch’s typical clueless white person format, instead tapping Hanks to play a MAGA hat-wearing conservative who knew a surprising amount about black culture — because he related to it.

Black Jeopardy, created by Che and Tucker, pushed its racial humour to a new level last year, tapping host Chadwick Boseman to appear in character as Black Panther.

When comedian and former SNL scribe John Mulaney hosted in March, the standout sketch was Cha Cha Slide, a four- minute masterpiece that looked like it would riff on the inherent awkwardness of a white guy attending a predominantly black wedding.

 Instead, the sketch revealed that Mulaney’s character, “a software engineer from Indianapolis,” may have been the blackest person at the event, at least in spirit.

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