One of the things that troubles many of us about Saturday Night Live, at least since Tina Fey left, is how fangless the show is when it comes to politics and current events. The Cold Open in this week’s James Franco hosted episode was the perfect illustration of that: They took the biggest news story of the year, and they made it about Al Sharpton’s inability to read a teleprompter. Really? That’s all you got?
On the other hand, the sketch they cut, Morning News, would’ve been the funniest sketch of the night. The premise is this: A cheery, obnoxiously peppy morning show in St. Louis has to stick to their peppy script even in the wake of the protests in Ferguson, but the anchors are like, “Nope. No way. We are not talking about the new cooking book Yum Yum in my Tum Tum while the city is falling down around us.”
Except that they have to, and of course, it’s impossible for Ferguson not to come up in hilarious — and sometimes inadvertently racist — ways.
“Downtown on December 9th, the blackies are per … I’m sorry, THE BLACK KEYS.”
Source: SNL
