by Panda La Terriere at UnHerd The Post
This weekend, actor Woody Harrelson delivered a provocative opening monologue during his appearance on the long-running American sketch show Saturday Night Live. In a clip that now has over a million views, Harrelson tells the audience about a script he read three years earlier while sunbathing and stoned in Central Park.
The plot went, as Harrelson recounts: “All the biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartels’ drugs and keep taking them over and over.” He then jokes that he threw the script away because it was far too unrealistic: “Who’s gonna believe that crazy idea?”
Unsurprisingly, the media reaction to this monologue was swift. Numerous headlines accused the actor of spreading ‘anti-vax conspiracy theories’, but what does this episode say about SNL itself?
Saturday Night Live has long had a reputation for its Left-liberal tilt, even serenading Barack Obama when he left office. During Covid, however, it went into overdrive. As part of its ‘lockdown satire’, there was ‘Coronavirus Holiday’, a sketch in which a family of anthropomorphised coronaviruses sit in their living room arguing about how to most effectively wreak havoc. A rebellious teenage coronavirus is tired of spreading so glugs anti-bacterial gel, praises Cuomo and announces he’ll be getting vaccinated. The mother wistfully looks back on their family history and says, “who would have thought a year ago we were just a glimmer in the eye of a sick bat?”
In another sketch,…
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