Saturday Night Live Takes America Home for the Holidays and It’s Painfully Funny

Plus: Don’t miss Kate McKinnon as Greta Thunberg.

Saturday Night Live’s opening sketch this week once again managed to sum up the desperately divided state of American politics, in six painfully accurate minutes.

It takes place around three dinner tables: There’s an ultraliberal family in San Francisco, California, praying to “gender-neutral spirits,” a conservative family in Charleston, South Carolina, praying to “original American Jesus,” and a black family in Atlanta, Georgia, praying to “historically correct black Jesus.” 

In San Francisco, Trump has “violated the constitution.” In Charleston, he’s simply committed “the crime of being an alpha male who actually gets things done.” When a young Chris Redd suggests talking politics in Atlanta, Kenan Thompson responds, “Oh, you mean how Trump is definitely getting impeached and then definitely getting reelected? I’m good.”

Aidy Bryant’s snowman narrator finally chimes in to wrap things up: “Those three families may seem different, but, see, they have one important thing in common. They live in states where their votes don’t matter. Because none of them live in the three states that will decide our election. They’ll debate the issues all year long, but then it all comes down to 1,000 people in Wisconsin who won’t even think about the election until the morning of. And that’s the magic of the electoral college.”

Then: enter Greta. Watch the full sketch above.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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