The aforementioned Ray Charles had no probem doing either of those things. In particular snorting cocaine can’t be that hard. Anyway there’s nothing wrong with them making fun the stuff he did - it happened nine month ago but it was news at the time for sure - making fun of him for what he is may be another story.
Fair enough. But I was referring to the joke where Michael O’Donaghue told Charles that the show was donating a painting to a museum in Charles’ honor and then unveiled the “painting” which was a sign saying “Don’t tell him”. Unlike the other jokes you mentioned, this one was supposedly being played on Charles rather than with him (although at the end of the scene, the punchline was that Charles knew the painting was fake).
The New York Times specifically said he didn’t like what he saw**** anyone else find this all too coincidental?
No thread about SNL can ever exist without someone mentioning how it’s not funny anymore and longing for the days of Belushi and Akroyd. I’ve been watching the show off and on for the past 30 years and every year has had its highs and its lows, its pushing of characters too far, this has never changed. If you want recent funny, check out any of SNLs Digital Shorts, perhaps start with ‘Jizz in my Pants’ or ‘Laser Cats’.
As for the topic, I wasn’t particularly offended, and while for the most part it was not funny, I did get a chuckle with Armisen in front of the camera at the end on the phone ordering ‘fifty dollars of concert tickets’ mirroring what Amy said earlier was the code phrase for buying pot.
So I’m guessing that Handi Manis right out? (Warning: if you found the SNL sketch offensive, Handi Man will make your head explode, which may or may not be worth seeing Jim Carrey as a wee sprout.)
They made it up to Ray by the end of the episode, though. They had him out on stage so Mr. Mike could donate a Monet to a foundation for the blind. Then they pull back the cover and it’s an empty frame with the words “please don’t tell him” in the middle. Ray closes the sketch by promising that Mr. Mike is going to be visited by 12 of the biggest black guys he’s ever seen who are going to beat the crap out of him.
The difference between SNL then and now isn’t the subject matter, it’s the attitude. They used to have actors; Jane Curtin behind the Weekend Update desk acted like a news anchor. Now they have stand-up comedians delivering lines as themselves. It went from “our top story tonight” to “ladies and gentlemen, Opera Man.” And when a real person starts insulting someone, instead of an actor in-character, it’s both less funny and more offensive.
Marley23:
Well, here I’m talking about Governor Patterson being offended by the sketch. An analogy to me specifically might be that I can enjoy South Park even when they make a Jew joke (not the anti-Semitic stuff that comes from Cartman’s mouth which is meant to display that character’s ignorance, but the ones where it’s actually coming from the creators, like Kyle’s lack of rhythm when dancing, or Kyle’s whiny, finicky, financially savvy cousin).
If you can only find comedy successful when it doesn’t hit home, then that’s not a sense of humor - that’s a mean spirit.
I thought it was great - the voice and the hobo beard were dead on. I mean, what’s UP with that hobo beard? Sure, he’s blind, but Stevie has someone doing his nice braids for him and he’s blind. Certainly someone can help this man - a governor, no less - with his facial hair.
I loved that Jersey joke about the southern border and then when he went on his cell phone in front of the camera I just about fell out.
There are some problems with this analysis. One is that you’re suggesting Paterson can dish it out but can’t take it - without showing he likes to dish it out. The other is that he only objected to the depiction of blind people in the sketch. He’s willing to mock his own situation, so to me, he objected to what SNL did with the “hey, this guy’s blind” jokes, and did not object to the skit just because it mocked him.
I think it was about 50/50. The bits about his scandals were fair game and later when he wandered in front of the cameras on his cell phone while ordering $50 of “Circus tickets” was funny. The rest was not and in pretty poor taste.
The main question for me - and I would imagine for any comedian - is “is it funny?” As this sketch - particularly the wandering-into-frame bits - was the only part of the show that made me laugh, in my case that trumps everything else. Humor is not objective, of course, but I imagine in the writing or rehearsal room it got a laugh, so it stayed in. How one justifies the rest of that episode, I can’t begin to imagine.
The second question is, “is it mean-spirited?” This can be debated of course, but I really don’t think so. It seems pretty clear to me that they were making fun of Patterson’s blindness, among his other traits, as opposed to blindness in general, which indeed would be mean-spirited. I don’t see any evidence that SNL was saying that Gov. Patterson is a bad or incapable governor, or that being blind makes him incompetent. The point is that he has a lot of traits (both inherent - blindness, and acquired - semi-salacious drug/sex history and a frank way of speaking) which one wouldn’t predict a governor to have. All of these things are fair game, and the point of the sketch is to heighten them to ridiculous levels. The circumstances that brought Patterson into office were absurd. This guy IS out of a Richard Pryor movie, yet he’s doing the job while being totally himself, and it seemed to me the sketch was celebrating that (by poking fun), not putting it down.
My guess is that the SNL writers are genuinely surprised by the Governor’s reaction to this, as they probably thought it was a fairly positive portrayal.
Marley23:
True enough, I suppose.
It’s true that he was very narrow in the objection he voiced, but I still think that being offended by humor about specific aspects of your own situation even if you accept humor about other aspects is still anti-comedically sensitive. As long as the joke is delivered in genuine good-humored spirit (for example, I wouldn’t expect Bill Clinton to laugh at Rush Limbaugh’s attacks, even if they might sometimes take humorous form), one should be capable of taking a step back and make himself a member of the audience.
The folks at SNL don’t hate blind people. All humor is at its core based on some degree of misunderstanding with the humor in the reveal, and not seeing is also a form of not understanding something. (That said, I suppose it might be a particular form of joke that Governor Patterson can’t appreciate, since he’s unable to take part in the audience reveal.)
You don’t have to hate somebody to say something hurtful or damaging about them, though. He didn’t say they hated blind people, the question is whether they said something stupid and ignorant to make a cheap joke. From what I can tell, Paterson’s willing to laugh at his own blindness, but it doesn’t follow that he has to laugh at every joke about his blindness.
My general position on comedy is that if it’s funny, it doesn’t need an excuse. Since the blindness jokes weren’t funny, we’re left to sift through the rubble. The rest of the skit was pretty good, but having Paterson holding a chart upside down is just dumb. Who the hell goes on a news show and holds up his own chart?
Of course not, but there’s a difference between finding something unfunny and finding something offensive.
There is a recurring pedophile character on Family Guy (the old man in a bathrobe who whistles when he talks).
Asked my (totally) blind fiance about it. Same reaction as Gov. Patterson - a little over the top, but he wasn’t outraged to the point of frothing at the mouth. He gets outraged at a lot of things, but this wasn’t one. Course, it wasn’t him personally.