Al Franken's Saturday Night Live era was full of jokes disparaging women

[RhodeIslandOne]

200. 1970's SNL was also a commentary on the stuff "you can't speak about"....

....in polite company.

The "Jane, you ignorant slut" joke was calling out what a show like "Point/Counterpoint" was, a woman being less than politely dismissed as having an irrelevant opinion. Instead of beating around the bush, the SNL Weekend Update called it like it was by going over the top and upping the ante. That may be "too in your face" for some people, but it was was it was. The same as Archie Bunker exhibiting bigoted and ignorant behavior on All In The Family. Here it is America, this is what the American Right is all about, and YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE. That's why educated people laughed. Not because Archie was dropping racist invective.

Now it seems we are returning to a culture where you can't make those jokes on TV. Conversely we have now entered a society where a United States President can blame "both sides" for a woman being murdered by a Nazi and smug right-wingers like Kelly Anne Conway and Tucker Carlson chiding liberals for saying white nationalists with "a different opinion" should not be called racists and bullied off stage. People who manipulate the media like Steve Bannon know this.

When true political satire and biting humor is stifled and automatically dismissed as bigoted, it often leads to an undesired effect. A false equivalency fest where suddenly even obvious bigots and misogynists like Richard Spencer and Ann Coulter can simply engage in "whataboutism" and defuse anything leveled against them in a humorous way as being "mean" and "impolite".