Silke Jasso
In an interview with the Daily Beast, former “Saturday Night Live” star Norm Macdonald criticized the show for playing into Donald Trump’s hands and talked about how comedy didn’t stop Hitler’s rise to power.
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“If you satirize someone, or mock them, you’re trivializing any danger that they might be. I don’t know any other way to do something,” the comedian said. “You can’t get a laugh without making the person more likable. Plus, I don’t think comedy does anything anyway.”
Macdonald, who was on “SNL” for five seasons and spent three of those as an anchor of “Weekend Update,” compared the unimportance of comedy to the era of Hitler and how he rose to power despite comedy troupes making fun of him.
“Hitler didn’t care and then he did all those bad things … this guy was no saint,” he said “So I have no historical precedent that comedy ever changed anything.”
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The Canadian, who couldn’t vote in the U.S. election but praised Trump ahead of his presidency, also said he was shocked by some of the show’s decisions around the election, such when Kate McKinnon performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and told viewers not to give up.
“I was like, what the fuck are we getting through? That a man was duly elected president? What are you, crazy?” said Macdonald. “It was so absurd that, for some reason, she was the one that was supposed to let me know that it’s alright to go on. Go on as if nothing happened. Nothing exploded.”
