Why didn’t the “hilarious” Matt Damon Saturday Night Live impersonation of Brett Kavanaugh doom the conservative judge’s nomination? That’s an apparently serious question posed on CNN.com, Monday. The online article by Bill Carter set out to answer the query no one asked: “Why Matt Damon's hilarious SNL skit couldn't stop the Kavanaugh confirmation.”
Carter, a veteran New York Times journalist, began by laying out just how impressed he was of the depiction of Kavanaugh as an unhinged sexual abuser: “Matt Damon got a lot of laughs — but no votes. It's hard to imagine a more comprehensive takedown of a political figure than the one Saturday Night Live executed on Brett Kavanaugh in its season premiere last month, at a time when the judge's fate seemed to be hanging in the balance.”
Why was this all so devastating? Because “Damon added several layers of ridicule to Kavanaugh's angry, aggressive testimony before the Senate, presenting him as a sputtering, sniffing, weeping, beer-loving caricature of judicial temperament.”
Yet, somehow, “a few hours before the dress rehearsal of the show's next episode, Kavanaugh was confirmed as a justice to the Supreme Court.” In a normal world, one might ask if the goal of a supposed comedy should be to torpedo judges and politicians? Perhaps making people laugh might be a better aim.
Yet, Carter didn’t ask this question. He also didn’t note just how inappropriate a messenger Damon is to highlight alleged sexual abuse. As I noted back on October 1, CNN doesn’t see it as weird that Damon should play Kavanaugh, despite the actor's history of ignoring the alleged crimes of sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein
After going through examples of SNL skewering politicians (the majority of which include hammering Republicans), Carter admitted that the show is now made by liberals and is speaking to liberals:
... There is little available audience left to be impressed by the impressions. The vast majority of those watching SNL, and most of the other late-night shows, are not neutral observers; they are mostly disposed to approve of — and laugh with — the left-of-center satirical shots being fired.
This is true. If we’re considering relevancy, this point is also true in general of CNN.
