Saturday Night Live Takes America Home for the Holidays and It’s Painfully Funny

Plus: Don’t miss Kate McKinnon as Greta Thunberg.

Saturday Night Live’s opening sketch this week once again managed to sum up the desperately divided state of American politics, in six painfully accurate minutes.

It takes place around three dinner tables: There’s an ultraliberal family in San Francisco, California, praying to “gender-neutral spirits,” a conservative family in Charleston, South Carolina, praying to “original American Jesus,” and a black family in Atlanta, Georgia, praying to “historically correct black Jesus.” 

In San Francisco, Trump has “violated the constitution.” In Charleston, he’s simply committed “the crime of being an alpha male who actually gets things done.” When a young Chris Redd suggests talking politics in Atlanta, Kenan Thompson responds, “Oh, you mean how Trump is definitely getting impeached and then definitely getting reelected? I’m good.”

Aidy Bryant’s snowman narrator finally chimes in to wrap things up: “Those three families may seem different, but, see, they have one important thing in common. They live in states where their votes don’t matter. Because none of them live in the three states that will decide our election. They’ll debate the issues all year long, but then it all comes down to 1,000 people in Wisconsin who won’t even think about the election until the morning of. And that’s the magic of the electoral college.”

Then: enter Greta. Watch the full sketch above.

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate