One of SNL’s New Cast Members Deleted a Bunch of Offensive Tweets When She Was Hired
Earlier this month, Melissa Villaseñor made headlines as one of Saturday Night Live‘s newest cast members, and also for being the first Latina cast member on the show ever. Now she’s in the news for a different reason. She’s facing backlash after deleting over 2,000 Tweets in just a few days.
Writer Aura Bogado and activist and writer April Reign did some digging and collected screen grabs of some of the Tweets in question.
I’m excited about the first latina on SNL but not gonna lie: deleting 2K tweets in 5 days is… odd. pic.twitter.com/p7D5Alm6qE
— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) September 17, 2016
All props to @aurabogado. I just took screenshots since @melissavcomedy is quickly scrubbing tweets like these… @nbcsnl @SNLUpdate pic.twitter.com/KXU9Z4DVqD
— April ?? (@ReignOfApril) September 22, 2016
@ReignOfApril @aurabogado @melissavcomedy @nbcsnl @SNLUpdate I also saved this gem and a few others. Please advise Snl. pic.twitter.com/AbsFyoqfUs
— Shanelle Little (@ShanelleLittle) September 22, 2016
The question of what’s offensive and whether there are things you simply can’t joke about is one that comes up a lot in comedy. If there are certain things you can’t joke about, can you joke about anything at all? Who is to decide what’s offensive?
Villaseñor may have seen this coming. Before she joined the cast of SNL, she made her Twitter private for a short time. By the time she made it public again, she had been called out and deleted a lot of her history. And, it’s likely she took history as a warning. When Jon Rudnitsky was hired in 2015, he came under fire for some of his past Tweets which many people deemed offensive to women.
She’s been quiet on Twitter since September 13th, when she said she was “grateful” to be joining the cast.
[featured image via screen grab/NBC]
[H/T Vulture, Huffington Post]
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