Liberals loved this earnest Kate McKinnon moment on SNL but Lorne Michaels wasnt a big fan

After Trump’s win in 2016, “Saturday Night Live” opened it first post-election show with Kate McKinnon at a piano, singing “Hallelujah” like a dirge.Lorne Michaels, the creator, executive producer and Grand Poobah of “SNL,” wasn’t pleased by its “mawkish righteousness,” writes Susan Morrison in her new book “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” out now.As Michaels’ longtime friend, singer/songwriter Randy Newman, told the author, “Lorne’s got a real old-fashioned, 1930s hard-­boiled antenna for that kind of liberal bullshit.” It didn’t help that alumni Chris Rock, who came to early rehearsals to watch with Michaels, turned to the producer and asked, “Where are the jokes?”Rock joined host Dave Chappelle for the first scene after the Hillary/“Hallelujah” requiem, in which they played the only Black people (and the least surprised by Trump’s win) at a party of white millennials gathered to watch the election returns.

When one stunned attendee declares, “This is the most shameful thing America has ever done,” both Chappelle and Rock burst out laughing.“The show’s young head writers hated the sketch,” writes Morrison, “but Michaels liked that it was a corrective to the earnestness of ‘Hallelujah.’”No matter what, Michaels is intent on making sure his show is always about jokes over preaching.“SNL is just show business [to him],” Morrison writes.

“Even when the world wants it to be something else — ­an anarchist collective, a settler of political scores, a cultural institution.”In March, 2019, Michaels sat down with his cast to remind them of, in his words, “the distinction between their own political feelings and the script.”It was sparked by then cast member Cecily Strong, who “was in a sulk about being asked to make fun of the Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein,” writes Morrison.“On whatever side, if there’s idiocy, we go after it,” Michaels explained to the cast, ac...