Man, Rolling Stone will never live down that horribly ill-advised ranking of all 141 Saturday Night Live cast members they published earlier this year. Opinions are like buttholes, etc., etc., but it was bad. If you’ll recall, this was the list that ranked Norm Macdonald at 135 out of 141, calling the almost universally beloved comedian a “Dennis Miller clone with no mullet and no jokes.”
That was the problem. Aside from being just plain wrong, the list was mean, as 139th-ranked Jim Breuer told Howard Stern on Thursday morning. Howard asked the unofficial Mets fans’ spokesman what he thought of the list, and Breuer had a much more dignified response than Rolling Stone deserved:
The thing with the Stone, I lost all respect for Rolling Stone, because I didn’t care about the list. It’s what that guy wrote about people. Like, there were cast members like, “Oh this douchebag…” Like why would you… People are just trying to make a living, and what kind of douche, where are you at in your life, that gives you the right to stand there and go, “Number 134, this guy, I wish he would die.”
For the record, Randy Quaid was No. 134, which… we won’t go there. At any rate, writing about entertainment, there’s a fine line between funny and critical and just plain nasty. Rolling Stone trampled that line and as a high profile publication, should have known better. Good on Jim Breuer for calling them out on it.
You can listen to the full interview segment below:
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