It wasn’t completely unexpected when Saturday Night Live focused its cold open on the massive wave of student protests sweeping America, but the exact direction it chose was a surprise. Rather than a news report or a sketch involving protester characters themselves, SNL chose to open up with a fake talk show.
Called “Community Affairs,” the talk show focused on a concerned host played by Michael Longfellow and two white, well-off parents played by Heidi Gardner and Mikey Day. At first, the conversation focused on the parents trying to be supportive of their kids, even as the protests have grown increasingly dangerous and volatile.
“I’m all for free speech, but I don’t understand what they think they’re accomplishing, and that’s really putting a strain on me and my daughter’s relationship,” says Gardner’s character. Day’s character adds, “Yeah, I want to let my son make his own choices, but to be honest, it’s a little scary.”
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Following the rule of three, in comes Kenan Thompson’s father character, who insists that he’s only OK with the protests as long as it’s the other parents’ kids doing it. “No, no, no,” he replies, when the others mistakenly assume his daughter’s a protester. “Alexis Vanessa Roberts better have her butt in class. Let me find out if she in one of them damn tents instead of the dorm room that I pay for!”
It’s a dynamic we’ve seen on SNL play out plenty of times before, of the concerned yet out-of-touch white liberals being repeatedly humbled by a more down-to-earth working-class character, but we’ve rarely seen it based around such a heated, emotionally charged situation as this one.
Viewers hoping SNL might use its cold open to shed some light on the message of the protesters or the controversial police response to them in universities like Columbia, might have been disappointed. This sketch’s closest thing to a main point is that only a privileged rich kid would risk their education for a pro-Palestine cause, and only white, well-off parents would be okay with them doing so.
“My business is Alexis Vanessa Roberts, OK?” Thompson’s character continued, to audience laughter. “She ain’t talking about no free this, free that. Because I tell you what ain’t free: Columbia. Do y’all know that they got the nerve to want $68,000 a year?”
The sketch concludes with Thompson’s character coping with the possibility that his daughter’s graduation ceremony might be canceled. From here, the sketch veers away from anything Palestine-related, instead going for familiar jokes about Black families being too loud at graduation ceremonies.
“You better believe I’ma be in there hooting and hollering after they explicitly told us to wait till the end… Man, if she don’t walk, Columbia gonna be on the news for something else. That’s all I know!”
