Grow a Spine, MAGA — You Won! Stop Whining About SNL Being Mean To You!

R: AI photo illustration

A Tom Hanks Saturday Night Live sketch has the “CRY MOAR” crowd watering the tree of liberty with MAGA tears — but they should dry their eyes and just be happy with their win.

On Sunday night, the long-running sketch show celebrated its 50th anniversary with a three-hour SNL50 special that included a bit in which Hanks is frightened by Black Jeopardy! host Kenan Thompson’s offer of a handshake, interpreting the greeting as an act of violence:

TOM HANKS: I know exactly who that is. The church lady!

KENAN THOMPSON: Yes. Yes, that is correct, Doug! That is the church lady. $400 for you!

TOM HANKS: Thank you. Speaking of church, can I say something? If more folks went to church, we wouldn’t be in this mess we’re in now.

KENAN THOMPSON: You know what? I agree with you, Doug. I’d like to shake your hand, sir. Here we go.

TOM HANKS: (HANDS UP — BACKING AWAY FEARFULLY) No, no, no!

KENAN THOMPSON: No, no. It’s just a handshake.

TOM HANKS: Oh, all right.

The joke drew condemnation from MAGA fans on social media, and from Lawrence Jones and Kayleigh McEnany on Monday’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends.

It also drew a detailed analysis from Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, who explained why the bit “didn’t work for reasons that most people misunderstand.”

There’s only one correct response to his column, and it is Colby, you ignorant slut! Or rather, it would have been if not for the fact that Colby and I are so old that “slut” has been reclaimed several times over since then and is (quite correctly) no longer an insult.

This sketch the latest in a long line of offenses to send Trump fans into whine production that would put both Ernest and Julio Gallo to shame — so much for “Fuck your feelings.”

As Colby explained, the Hanks bit is actually not about what the screeching MAGA fans say it is — which is really on-brand for them. Hanks’s character Doug isn’t refusing to shake a Black man’s hand, he’s panicking because he thinks Darnell is trying to rob or assault him — it’s actually a gloss on an ancient trope that conservatives love when it’s White liberals locking their car doors when they go into a Black neighborhood.

Was it funny? I’m going to make news and agree that it was not, but only because the comic timing wasn’t really there. Hanks should have ducked, offered his wallet, and shouted “Take it! Take it!”

All in all, though, it was a gentle and almost generous portrayal of what many see as the worst Trump fandom has to offer.

With all due respect to Lawrence Jones and the wounded feels of MAGA fans everywhere, there is a strong anti-Black streak (a current member of Trump’s administration called then-Vice President Kamala Harris a “colored DEI hire”) — and an even stronger and wider White grievance streak — in the MAGA movement and its leader.

But that’s not why the MAGA faithful should quit their crying.

Neither is it the fact that while they sob over this minor offense, their guy has literally called his fellow Americans literal vermin.

Neither is it the fact that despite their constant mockery of Hollywood and demands that stars stay out of politics, they will ride the microscopic tail trailing pro-MAGA stars like Dean Cain with the glee of an 11-year-old streaking across the sky astride Twilight Sparkle.

It’s like the headline says — you won! Sure, some of you are finding out that Trump is still going to destroy your livelihood and make prices go up even more. But you won!

There is nothing anyone can do to stop him! Even the tiny procedural obstacles Democrats can throw up in the Senate can be discarded at the whim of the Republican senate majority leader! He’s got a 6-3 Supreme Court, and if he ignores them, what is anybody going to do?

So whatever pangs of sorrow you feel when James Austin Johnson makes fun of Trump, or some other cast member dons a MAGA hat and acts a fool, should be drowned out by the fact that the joke is really on anyone who is still left to “resist” during Trump’s third term.

Watch above via Saturday Night Live.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.