Do You Want the Courts Deciding If It’s Legal for SNL to ‘Belittle’ Trump?

by Causes | 12.17.18

What’s the story?

• President Donald Trump tweeted over the weekend that the Department of Justice should stop investigating his administration and pursue the "real" enemy: Saturday Night Live. 

What are both sides saying?

• DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News that SNL is “clearly designed as much as a political commentary show as it is a comedy, entertainment show.”
• “Surely, ‘SNL' has had fun with content about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but the tone has not been nearly as charged as with the attacks on Trump,” McCall said.

“SNL is exercising its comedic and political free speech license to take on political personalities and issues as it sees fit, so Trump and his supporters should not expect any sort of balance. If anything, expect SNL to give Trump a very rough time heading into the 2020 election season.”

• Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) tweeted:

• The courts likely won’t hear the president’s case against SNL as parody has historically been protected on free speech grounds. “A prime example of courts protecting the media’s right to parody a celebrity came in 1988 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of pornographer Larry Flynt after Rev. Jerry Falwell sued over a satirical interview in Hustler magazine that joked that Falwell’s first sexual encounter was with his own mother,” the New York Daily News explained.

What do you think?

Should SNL’s belittling of Trump “be tested in courts”? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: SNL screengrab)