The Deeper Lessons of an Edgy SNL Tradition

Even by the standards of shocking Michael Jackson jokes, it was a shocking joke. “Michael Jackson did nothing wrong,” Michael Che, a co-anchor of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” said during last night’s episode. “He was right to molest all those kids.” This was delivered with palpable surprise at the words coming out of his mouth, but Che kept going: “They were lucky. I would have paid him to do it. And I did! That’s right, when I was 10 years old, Michael Jackson molested me, and the only thing it gave me was a fetish for middle-aged white women.” He then smiled and said, almost as an aside, “That is not why I have that.”Che, of course, wasn’t saying what he actually thinks about the late pop star or his own personal sexual preferences. He was participating in a tradition where he and co-anchor Colin Jost each write “Weekend Update” material that the other man has to deliver cold, without seeing the joke ahead of time. The goal is to make their co-anchor look as crass, offensive, and stupid as possible, and Jost had crafted a real doozy for Che to read. But the joke wasn’t just about shocking the audience or innovating in the seemingly spent arena of Michael Jackson jokes—it also demonstrated how the right context can make grotesque humor sing, by turning the discomfort of the joke teller into the real gag.In an interview with the comedian Mike Birbiglia, Che said that the stunt was inspired by the “Update” jokes they’d written that had bombed during dress rehearsal. (Che recalled how one groaner was greeted with a woman loudly saying “no.”) But for one episode, Che and Jost decided to recycle those same jokes for the other man to say. To Che’s surprise, the act of telling the audience that they were aware that these jokes were in bad taste “made them laugh hysterically.” Jost pushed for them to do it again, but without knowing the jokes ahead of time; Che admitted that he became worried Jost was going to surprise him, “so I wrote new ones that were horrifi