If Saturday Night Live gets under your skin, Today Show host Matt Lauer asked Donald Trump last week, why donât you âsimply stop watching,â instead of ranting about it on Twitter? A fair question, youâd think, but Trump responded by launching another rant: âThereâs nothing funny about itâ; Alec Baldwinâs impersonation is âreally mean-spirited, [itâs] very biased and I donât like it.â
The president-elect has a lot of confused ideas about how the federal government works, but did he really imagine that one of the perks of the presidency is that no oneâs allowed to make fun of you?
Maybe so. The previous Saturday, when SNL aired a routine mocking Trumpâs Twitter Touretteâs, Trump shot off an indignant tweet: âUnwatchable! âŚ.the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worseâ; two weeks before that, Trump squawked: âtotally one-sided, biased showânothing funny at all. Equal time for us?â
Itâs become abundantly clear that Trump canât take a jokeâwhich is an unsettling thing to learn about a man whoâs about to get his very own killer drone fleet. Heâs entitled to express his opinion. But the rest of us are allowed to worryânot just because the president-elect has repeatedly shown contempt for the First Amendment, but also because, in just over a month, this thin-skinned, easily provoked character will ascend to âthe most powerful office in the world.â
Of course, Trump wonât be the first federal chief executive who thinks he deserves a âsafe spaceâ from mockery and criticism. Though we consider it one of our God-given rights as Americans to make fun of the president, our history shows that itâs a right that was hard-won and not always well-respected.
Under the (thankfully) short-lived Sedition Act of 1798, for example, Americans could be fined or imprisoned for making âfalse, scandalous, and maliciousâ statements against âthe President of the United States, with intent to defame⌠or bring [him] into contempt or disrepute.â Among those prosecuted under the Act was New Jersey Republican Luther Baldwin (no relation to Alec), who, during a 16-gun salute to John Adams at a parade in Newark, declared to his drinking buddies his hope that the cannon fire would hit the president in âhis arse.â
By the early days of mass media, Americansâ right to insult the sovereign had long enjoyed formal legal protection. Even so, radio and television comedians tended to tread lightly, lest they offend the most powerful man in the world. In 1934, for example, comic Eddie Cantor felt compelled to ask FDRâs approval for a woefully tame radio bit wherein âDr. Rooseveltâ heals âMrs. Americaâ: âHeâs got that magnetic personalityâthe minute he walks into a sickroom, the patient feels better already.â And in 1961, NBC executives spiked a skit about the Kennedys as âa matter of good tasteâŚ. We thought it would have been improper to have performers actually portraying the president and his wife.â As historian Kathryn Cramer Brownwell explained in a recent article for Presidential Studies Quarterly, TV comedy producers of the era âcarefully avoided controversy,â in part because the FCC, âwith members appointed by the presidentâregulated broadcast licenses and set standards for programming.â
In 1962, a young stand-up named Vaughn Meader skyrocketed to instant fame as a JFK impersonator; his album First Family topped the Billboard charts for three months. The LP cover included a nervousâjust kidding, folks!âdisclaimer: âno one has more respect for the high offices and the people suggested here than [we do].â After taping a performance for a CBS variety show, Meader sent an obsequious telegram to JFK before it aired: âI impersonated you but I did it with great affection and respect. Hope it meets with your approval.â
Meader may have been right to worry: JFK didnât care for the impression, and had aides look into what could be done to keep presidential impersonators off the airwaves. He even had his press secretary call the head of the Federal Communications Commission about it, but eventually concluded it would be wiser to put up with a bit of affectionate teasing.
The possibility of presidential retaliation loomed large in the minds of CBS network executives when the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour began to push the envelope on acceptable presidential mockery starting in 1967. The presidential impressions featured on that show, like comic David Frye, played a lot rougher than Vaughn Meader, and folk singer Pete Seegerâs anti-Vietnam song âWaist Deep in the Big Muddyââwith its thinly veiled dig at âthe big fool,â President Lyndon Johnsonâsparked a fight with the CBS brass. âItâs okay to satirize the president, as long as you do so with respectâ one executive warned the Brothers. LBJ called CBS Chairman William S. Paley to complain about the show, and, despite its popularity, Paley pulled the plug on it shortly after Richard Nixonâs inauguration.
That culture of deference couldnât survive Vietnam and Watergate, however. In the 1970s, as Americans learned about the massive abuses of executive power their presidents had committed, they embraced a more irreverent comic style.
Saturday Night Live was at the center of this cultural shift, showing that not only was it âokayâ to satirize the president, but you neednât necessarily âdo it with respect.â A 1976 SNL skit on Nixonâs âFinal Daysâ featured a drunken RMN (Dan Ackroyd) ranting at JFKâs portrait and hurling anti-Semitic slurs at Henry Kissinger (John Belushi). Harshâbut not far off from the real thing.
That year, Gerald Ford became the first president to perform the opening line: âLive from New York, itâs Saturday Night!ââpre-taped in the Oval Office to run on a show guest-hosted by his press secretary, Ron Nessen. Nessen had accepted the invitation to host, he said, to show that âthe president could take a joke.â The showâs writers decided to test that proposition; as one of them put it: âThe Presidentâs watching. Letâs make him cringe and squirm.â That they did, by kicking the vulgarity up a notch, with parody commercials featuring a carbonated douche called âAutumn Fizzâ and a jam called âPainful Rectal Itch.â
Still, in the end, Ford was glad heâd done it; a decade later, heâd defend the appearance as a way to defuse âany hint of âimperialâ trappings in connection with the presidencyâ; and while Chevy Chaseâs portrayal of the president as a pratfalling spaz was sometimes embarrassing, âIt was also funny,â Ford admitted.
Since the â70s, getting mocked on TVâsometimes to his faceâhas been a rite of passage for every president. Even the White House Correspondents Dinner, the annual confab where DC reporters suck up to the president, has its moments every decade or so: as in 2006, when Stephen Colbert served up âuncomfortably harsh mockery of President Bush and the press corps,â and 1996, when Bill Clinton had to suffer through Don Imus jabbing him over his multiple infidelities.
Presidential ridicule is therapeutic for a democracy. When we mock our rulers, we remind themâand usâthat theyâre mere mortals. They werenât put on earth to solve all our problems, and they shouldnât be given the power to try.
Does our incoming chief executive represent a threatâlegally or otherwiseâto the great American pastime of taking the bark off the president? Trump has certainly made it clear that, given the chance, heâd turn his prejudices into policy: Heâs bloviated about âopen[ing] up our libel lawsâ so public figures enjoy greater protection from rough treatment in the media. And where Richard Nixon schemed privately about using antitrust prosecutions to cow the media, Trump has made such threats openly: âbelieve me, if I become president, oh do they have problems,â heâs said of Amazonâs Jeff Bezos, and the paper he owns, The Washington Post.
Still, the fact that Trump has blustered about going after his critics will make it harder for him to get away with using federal power to harass them. And heâd have to search pretty hard to get conservative justices who disagree with Supreme Court precedent holding that the First Amendment protects âvehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.â Criminal defense attorney and popular lawblogger Ken White concludes that Trumpâs threats to revise libel law âshould concern you as an attitude about speech, but not much as a policy agenda.â
Trumpâs attitude toward criticism should also concern us because it suggests a resentful, hair-trigger temperamentâquick to take offense, and ready to lash out. Youâd like to think that anyone the country entrusts with the enormous, destructive powers of the presidency will be a coolheaded type who can resist provocation from tougher customers than Alec Baldwin. But, as Trump made clear on the campaign trail, heâs too sensitive even to laugh off a jibe about the size of his handsâand other extremitiesâfrom âLittle Marcoâ Rubio. Last March, after the Florida senator cracked, âyou know what they say about men with small hands?â, Trump rushed to reassure the nation in the next GOP primary debate: âI guarantee you there's no problemâ in that department. Oddly enough, it wasnât reassuring.
We have plenty to worry about as Trumpâs inauguration looms, but our right to mock the president will remain secure. Instead of ushering in a new era of respect for the presidency, President Trump is a sure bet to provide comics with plenty of new material. That, at least, is some consolation: weâre going to need the laughs.
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency.