Saturday Night Live (SNL)

The Cos didn't care much for the joke. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1106376#aoh=15771238081517&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s

The Cos can go [bleep] himself.

As many others on the internet pointed out, Bill Cosby has a publicist???

That just shows how someone can still have that much power from prison. But seriously, I think he's really always wanted to rip Bill Cosby a real one since the 80's, due to the fact that he was harshly criticized by his former idol. It does seem like poetic and karmic revenge that Eddy Murphy comments on the current situations between him and Bill.

I've been going through the old Celebrity Jeopardy skits after hearing about Trebek's passing. For some reason SNL hasn't uploaded the buck futter one.

It’s not on You Tube but NBC uploaded it to their website.

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/celebrity-jeopardy-calista-flockhart-nicolas-cage-sean-connery/2861341

Man, these sketches are all time greats in SNL. Now two of their subject matter have sadly passed on. That’s a bummer.

After Connery and Trebek's recent deaths I was thinking SNL better do an Afterlife Celebrity Jeopardy sketch. Side note: everyone depicted in the first Celebrity Jeopardy sketch has died in the last 3.5 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaFSkWfFhO0

Edited by MFLuder on Nov 9th 2020 at 11:19:29 AM

That sounds really iffy. Like, it could work, or it could come off as tasteless.

But some kind of homage would be nice.

Anything with the recently departed needs to walk a fine line.

That being said, if they were up for it, and had the right script, I wouldn’t mind seeing Ferrel’s Trebek trading barbs with Connery one last time.

Would they both be in Heaven, because Trebek might not consider eternity with Connery Heaven.

They would need Norm as Burt Reynolds there as well. Come to think of it, maybe throw in Dana Carvey so he could do Carson or Bush 1 one last time.

Seriously though, they better have a Trebek and Connery skit this week. I don't care what Will Farrell is doing, drag his ass back to New York.

Has John Oliver expressed any interest in hosting SNL?

Regina King will be hosting SNL.

Just wondering what people around here think: was it the right move to give Alec Baldwin the Trump impression, should they have kept it with Darrell Hammond, or should they have given it to someone else?

I think Baldwin's Trump impression is okay. I don't really have a particular preference.

Elon Musk will be hosting SNL next month.

The same guy who falsely and unrepentantly accused one of those rescue divers of being a pedophile.

*Vomits*

I googled “Elon Musk comedy” to see if he has like, any history at all with it (besides his ill-advised publicity stunts) and learned about his venture into creating a satire comedy website.

Yeesh.

Isn't he that ashhole who abuses his employees and keeps making defective rockets?

Just remember: as terrible as the Trump episode was, it was also a massive ratings hit.

They know people will hatewatch and they're counting on it. I'm just skipping the May 8th show.

Oooh, oooh. I get to jump in here. [rubs hands together]

First, I think this is a really dopey idea because Elon Musk is not a comedian and doesn't have the greatest stage presence, but being a comedian (or indeed funny) is not a requirement to host SNL, so it may not be a problem in that respect.

Second, Musk has appeared in several acting roles, including on Rick and Morty, The Big Bang Theory, South Park, and Iron Man 2. So he has experience in both comedic and serious roles and is clearly able to stick to a script.

If it were just about whether he can appear on a stage without embarrassing himself, it wouldn't be an issue. People just as famous as he is have done this and not become the target of public shaming attempts... well, mostly. The point is that the "uproar" is more about who he is than how well he will perform.

Elon tweeted today asking his followers for skit ideas, so he's also taking this seriously — as seriously as he takes anything in the public media space, anyway. He's got a quirky sense of humor and loves memes, so at the very least we are likely to get some memorable moments.

As for the other stuff, while I don't want to get into a complete biographical argument, it's reasonable for someone as famous and successful as he is to get a billing on a show like SNL. He is a billionaire who runs two extremely successful businesses (Tesla and SpaceX) and runs several others that are developing novel approaches to or commercializing advanced technologies (Neuralink, The Boring Company). He has invested into AI research, sent his personal car into space, is building an orbital Internet satellite constellation, is developing self-driving technology, is trying to get to Mars, and has won a NASA contract to land astronauts on the Moon. Those are some pretty sweet credentials.

He also has a lot of negative press, some deserved and some not. Hating him is something of a fad among "progressives", which is in my opinion one of the most ridiculous self-owns in the history of politics and defies my personal conception of the left as placing a reliance on factual reality rather than kneejerk reactions and bandwagon hate. Of course, I should know better.

I'm not sure it's worth going into full detail (this isn't the Elon Musk topic, nor should we have one), but most of the commonly known facts about him are either misunderstood or flat-out lies, amplified by people with a vested interest in damaging his reputation, such as Big Oil and Big Auto, both of whom we are supposed to be against.

• He was not an inheritor of wealth. He was abused by his estranged father and left for Canada with $2,000. He never received any money from his family and in fact supports them. He did not ride on "blood diamonds". There is no evidence that he is racist or has done anything racist.
• He is completely self-made. In college he started some Internet businesses that he sold for quite a bit of money, then used that to start other businesses. He started SpaceX and helped found Tesla with proceeds from the sale of his stake in PayPal. He invested every single dime of his personal fortune into those and they remain his main investments.
• He is in fact the chief engineer at Tesla and SpaceX as well as the chief designer. He is an essential part of the design and development process of those companies' technology. He's not just a "money guy". All you have to do is listen to him talk about these things.
• He has nothing to do with any Latin American countries and their lithium mines. That is completely made up.
• He does not support child labor in Congoese cobalt mines. Tesla makes efforts to ethically source cobalt and is an industry leader in removing cobalt from battery cells.
• He does not "abuse his employees". Tesla workers are paid competitively, receive benefits and stock options, and there is no evidence to support a claim that injury rates are above industry standards. He has resisted UAW enrollment in part because the UAW dislikes Tesla and electric vehicles in general for requiring less labor per vehicle to produce.
• Tesla is not a "fraud". It produced and sold 500,000 vehicles in 2020 and is on track to produce between 800,000 and a million in 2021. Tesla's cars are the highest rated by Consumer Reports for four years running and have received the highest crash safety scores on record from IIHS, NHTSA, and other agencies.
• There was a high-profile "whistleblower" case related to the Tesla factory in Nevada, which resulted in a civil lawsuit for sabotage and corporate espionage that Tesla won, proving that the person in question was lying and possibly deranged.
• SpaceX is actively working on lowering the cost of access to space, primarily by reusing rocket stages. Last year, it successfully carried astronauts to orbit from U.S. soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011 and delivers more than three fourths of total global payload tonnage to orbit.
• The "exploding rockets" in Texas are part of a rapid-prototyping development methodology designed to find all possible failure points before building something that will eventually carry people. This iterative approach is very different from traditional aerospace companies and has attracted a lot of attention, but it is not "flawed" or indicative of safety problems.

Now, the other things...

• Elon did get into a public spat with a Thai cave diver who insulted him for a proposed submarine that could be used to rescue children trapped in a cave. The exchange of insults (based in part on information from a fraudulent private detective) resulted in a defamation lawsuit which Elon won. It's not his prettiest moment.
• He does have libertarian-leaning political views.
• He was initially very skeptical of COVID-19 restrictions and said/did some really dumb things in many people's eyes. However, he did task Tesla to produce precision parts for ventilators and mRNA machines. Yes, he did contract COVID-19, but he did not cause any risk to the astronauts that went up on the Crew-1 mission. He did call the California government "fascist" for shutting down the Tesla factory there.
• He is promoting bitcoin, dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. I think this is a really bad idea but there are an awful lot of people who disagree with me. It's a common point of contention among Tesla followers.
• He has a stutter and an occasional case of foot-in-mouth disease.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2021 at 11:21:08 AM

For whatever it’s worth, SNL is allegedly giving its cast members the option to not come into work for the Elon Musk episode and face no penalty.

Well, my point is that if you want to yell about him, at least yell for the right reasons. The bitcoin stuff is dumb (and counterproductive). The covidiocy was also dumb. The "pedo guy" incident was really dumb. But the "fraud" argument is baloney. He's quite possibly the most honest billionaire in history. If the argument is "he must be a horrible person because he's a billionaire", then I challenge you to examine your own biases.

We on the left really need to get our priorities straightened out and not tear down people who are using capitalism in service of progressive goals like addressing climate change and sustainable energy.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2021 at 7:41:28 AM

I'm not a fan of multibillionaires hosting SNL in general, but I guess most people on SNL are advertising something. It's lost any pretense of being anti-authority or anything. It is an institution.

I just keep thinking about the Forbes/Rage Against the Machine incident, and the Trump hosting nightmare. If they aren't making fun of Musk then it's gonna be hard to watch. (Even the episodes where they just gush about celebrities being hot for easy audience "woo!"s can get annoying.) Luckily Michael Che is already making fun of the hosting gig so at least he'll probably get edgy as he does.

I'll probably skip this episode and watch it on Hulu or Youtube later just because it feels like like obvious controversy-view-grab and I don't care to feed into that. I don't know or care much about Musk as a businessman, but I find him an obnoxious human even if he's pushing good ideas for the environment.

Edited by mightymewtron on May 1st 2021 at 8:29:46 AM

Those are fair opinions. I like Elon when he's talking cars and rockets, not so much when he's talking politics. I usually don't watch SNL live, but I'm considering tuning in for the inevitable cringe factor. I hope that he will be good-natured about the inevitable jokes at his expense.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2021 at 8:39:38 AM