Saturday Night Live opened this week’s show at the White House, where James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden was congratulating new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Ego Nwodim) on her historic confirmation. When Justice Jackson said she bet Biden couldn’t say her name “three times fast” the president replied, “I’m shocked I was able to say it one time slow.”
“I was happy to do my part,” Jackson told Biden. “Work twice as hard as a white man my entire life and then spend a week listening to Ted Cruz call me a pedophile.”
Left alone in the Oval Office, Jackson conjured the specters of some of the “great Americans” who came before her, starting with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as played by Kate McKinnon.
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“Here’s my advice,” Ginsburg told her. “Always label your lunches. Some of those justices have sticky fingers. Second, if you are anything like me, white ladies will start wearing buttons of your face like an ‘I Voted’ sticker. It’s freaky, but they mean well.”
Unlike Ginsburg, who was confirmed with a vote of 96-3, Jackson had a much harder road and in the end only three Republicans supported her. Or as she put it, “A lot of them walked out and one guy kept asking me if babies are racist.”
“Ted Cruz?” Ginsburg asked. When Jackson confirmed her suspicions and explained that Cruz used his time to read a children’s book “at her,” her predecessor replied, “Well, it was Ted Cruz, so I bet the book was called ‘Good Night Cancun.’ That’s a Gins-burn!”
Next up, Kenan Thompson’s Thurgood Marshall appeared and was immediately shocked by how little had changed in America since he was on the court. “I was the first Black Supreme Court justice, so you must be what, the 10th, the 20th?” he asked. When she explained that she was only the third, he replied, “No further questions, your honor.”
Later, Jackson was joined by Punkie Johnson’s Harriet Tubman and Chris Redd’s Jackie Robinson, who shared some warnings about the challenge of being “the first” Black anything in America. “Being the first is kind of fun,” Robinson told Jackson. “Here’s my advice. Watch out for batteries. You will get so many batteries thrown at you.”
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