When Saturday Night Live returned for its 42nd season last night, America got to laugh in the face of terror — or at least at the faces of actors like Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon, and Larry David, as they recreated the 2016 presidential-election living-nightmare. Some fans, however, weren’t smiling during “Weekend Update†when hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che discussed football player Colin Kaepernick’s choice to sit during the national anthem — a decision he and several other professional athletes made to protest the mistreatment of African-Americans and other people of color in America. Che joked, “I can understand why white guys love the national anthem so much — because this country’s always been great for white guys. You absolutely should defend the national anthem. If I was white, I’d always defend the national anthem.†He then continued, “I expect white guys to defend the national anthem like I expected Phylicia Rashad to defend Bill Cosby. I’m sure when people were protesting The Cosby Show, Clair Huxtable was like, ‘I don’t know what he did to y’all, but the n— made me rich!†The use of the racial slur on a network show, even at such a late hour, caught some by surprise and upset others who didn’t want the word used at all. Watch the clip above and read Twitter responses below.
