Try to imagine a faith-friendly Saturday Night Live

If you want to understand cultural clout, start with the artists who define comedy

Recently, I wrote a post addressing President Donald Trump’s decision to appoint a trio of “Special Ambassadors” to Hollywood. Why did the White House do that? In part because the big shots at many entertainment giants are struggling these days to reach, well, Middle America.

I noted that the ambassadors chosen — Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Jon Voight — were not exactly spring chickens. Oh, and there seemed to be a lack of gender diversity in that set, when I thought that there were some interesting options in the XX-XY world.

In that piece (“Trump’s very old-school outreach to Tinsel Town”), I asked readers to propose some nominees of their own:

Personally, I wish that the White House folks had asked actress Patricia Heaton (or maybe they did, behind the scenes). Is the talented writer-director-actress Bonnie Hunt a right-of-center figure in Hollywood?

Pause for a moment: In the comments section, please name a major Hollywood artist or executive that you would nominate to take part in a project of this kind (set aside your opinions of Trump) because you believe he or she represents a truly alternative point of view. Extra credit for nominations of players who are under the age of, let’s say, 45. Extra credit if they have won an Oscar.

This week, I have been thinking about comedy, a very important niche in the world of mainstream American entertainment. The topic was on my mind for three reasons:

(1) I was spending quite a bit of time watching YouTubes featuring the work of the late, great Southern humorist Grady Nutt — who I knew when I was growing up, because he was a friend of the Mattingly family.

I am happy to report that more of his work is showing up online and, frankly, I really hope that someone digs out video of Nutt appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Here is a small sample of what Grady liked to do on stage: “Cuss Words for Ministers.” Our friend, who was an ordained Southern Baptist minister, died in a plane crash just as he was beginning to get national-media exposure.

(2) I have been digging into the Nutt files for a logical reason — I was preparing for an interview with the great comedian Jeff Foxworthy for an upcoming “On Religion” column.

If you want to know more about Foxworthy’s faith, including his Bible study for the homeless, check out this interesting non-comedy feature: “The Only Thing We Can Do for God.” If you want to see some of the stand-up work that made him a legend, do an online search for “You might be a redneck if.” For a look at the young Foxworthy, here he is discussing redneck culture with the aforementioned Carson:

I don’t want to get into the details of my Foxworthy interview, until I have worked my way through the material and written next week’s column. A major theme will be why he has never done a set of comedy material that you could call “You may be a redneck churchgoer if.” Trust me, he has been tempted.

Oh, and as a guy who experienced 25 kidney stones in the past few decades, let me suggest that folks watch this more recent Tonight Show offering from Foxworthy:

(3) Now, spending lots of time with Nutt and Foxworthy material led me to thinking about comedy culture and religion. Then I ran into an interesting commentary by Marcus Pittman at his Poorly Written newsletter on Substack (of course). The double-decker headline on this challenging piece declared:

If we want to win the culture war, we need a Saturday Night Live.

For better or worse, Lorne Michaels single-handedly built the culture of the USA.

There’s a good chances that Rational Sheep readers may have bumped into one of the 10,000 or so news references to the recent 50th anniversary of the creation of Saturday Night Live. Maybe there have been more than that, if you toss in the social-media threads and YouTube commentaries. You think?

OK, it’s important to think (and maybe even argue) about SNL and its impact.

Let’s start here, in terms of this Pittman piece. I think it’s crucial to ask who the “we” is in that headline’s first phrase — “If we want to win the culture war. …”

The “we” is folks living in the world of cultural conservatism. This brings us back to that rather strange “Special Ambassadors” to Hollywood concept created by folks at the new White House.

Start with this question: Are massive culture shifts in entertainment, as a rule, created by young people or, well, OLD people? Consider the overture to the Pittman piece:

In 1975, NBC gave Lorne Michaels a chance to produce what is quite possibly the riskiest show of all time. Live comedy featuring a recurring cast of unknown comedians and sketch performers.

Politics always influence the creative culture of the time, and the 1970’s were no different. Nixon resigned a year ago and Ford was now President. Vietnam had just ended and with it the younger generations trust in the United States Government.

Another thing that was happening all over the country was the rise of comedy clubs. With it, the entire comedy scene was changing. Comedy was becoming more rebellious. Gone were the days of vinyl comedy albums cleaned and polished by studio executives. People were going to Comedy Clubs and hearing people like George Carlin, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman and Rodney Dangerfield.

Comedy was dangerous and experimental. Comedy Clubs were the boot-camp of the culture war. Training soldiers for battle, one night at a time. …

With the rise of comedy clubs, comedy was shifting away from the older generations into a newer hippie generation. Popular comedy was crude and vulgar, politically charged and pushing the boundaries of free speech. It discussed hot button issues like racism and sexual ethics. The younger generation was rebelling against the values of their parents, and Lorne Michaels saw this cultural shift and decided to get behind it. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Michaels was relative young back then and, needless to say, so were the unknown talents in the original Not Ready For Primetime Players.

NBC executives took a risk. Some assumed that this experimental show would fail and that they could go back to late-night life as usual.

TV never went back to life as usual. Pittman boldly notes:

If you went back in time before the first airing of SNL and you Thanos snapped Lorne Michaels out of existence, the comedy landscape would be unrecognizable.

There would be no Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, David Spade, John Belushi or Dan Aykroyd. Bill Murray, Billy Crystal. Will Ferrell, Tina Faye, Amy Poehler, Jimmy Fallon or Conan O’Brien. All the movies they made. All the TV shows they made. Just gone.

But it’s not just the actors and movies that they made that’s snapped away with it, it’s all the artists and comedians that were inspired or platformed by the people platformed by Lorne.

I would argue that there is not a single influential comedic work within the United States that has not in some way graced the SNL sphere of influence.

Consider Conan O’Brien, for example. Pittman noted that he was a mere SNL writer, not even a cast member, when Lorne Michaels selected him to take over David Letterman’s late night time slot decades ago.

At this point, readers need to click over to the Pittman newsletter to view the charts showing the massive financial impact of SNL — outside of the show itself.

Suffice it to say that this talent tree has “generated nearly $28 Billion dollars in movies and entertainment outside the SNL show itself.” That doesn’t include the impact of the armies of musicians who have appeared on SNL over the decades.

This brings us to Pittman’s bottom line:

… Building a creative culture takes decades. SNL is the prime example of that. Lorne Michaels did not just create a sketch comedy show. He created a platform for comedians to fail in front of a live audience, week after week. A place for writers to hone their skills. A place for talent to rise to the top in the most stressful of circumstances. Even Marvel and Disney took nearly 100 years to get to where we are.

This is what conservatives need to invest in if they really want to change the culture. Something that can change over the course of decades and appeal to new audiences as they grow up. Not a mega studio. Not a Hollywood competitor.

We need to think in terms of incubators and talent generators. We need to platform artists that no one knows about and create mechanisms where unknowns can build a name for themselves. We need to create systems that allow artists to fail, over and over again, until they finally get something right. It’s not about hiring the most well known actors, but building the next generation of cultural influencers, and then doing it over and over again.

This leads me to another question, one related to my “Special Ambassadors” challenge.

Name three or more religious believers who have made an impact on the mainstream culture of American humor over the past few decades. Let me stress that we are not talking about the world of “Christian” comedy. We may, of course, be talking about comedians and humor writers who have chosen to compete in the world of “clean humor.”

That’s fine. The late, very great Bob Newhart did quite well, as a Roman Catholic believer, while “limiting” himself of clean humor. Did anyone get the impression, when listening to that comedic genius (click here for his Mark Twain Prize acceptance speech), that he was working with chains on his wit?

How about Foxworthy? Has his faith and shewed approach to life prevented him from being one of the most successful artists of his generation? How about his ability to spot other blue-collar talents and lift them up for others to see?

But we need to talk about the next generation, don’t we? We can’t even focus on a relative newcomer like Leanne Morgan, a rising star who is an absolute hoot — but half the material in her portfolio focuses on crazy riffs about aging (“When you go to concerts with old people”).

So I will ask: If “cultural conservatives” want to create an SNL-model incubator in the wild, wild, world of online streaming mass media, to whom would they hand the reins? We need someone, let’s say, under the age of 40.

Let’s focus, if at all possible, on mainstream humor — not political memes and niche-market religious material. Not preaching to the choir (even if that is what SNL does most of the time, these days).

Who are the first funny young folks who come to mind if you are trying to create a cast for a truly countercultural SNL for the other half of America?

Names please, in the comments section. Go for it.