Has ‘Saturday Night Live’ Always Been So Cowardly?

“Saturday Night Live” isn’t “live” again until the end of the month.

So there’s no official or unofficial response to the week-long meltdown over a single monologue joke from Oct. 10 guest host Shane Gillis.

“I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know that women just dress like whores now.”

Cue an endless stream of fake outrage. How do we know it’s fake? The same people clutching their pearls have said nothing about a vicious political pundit with far more power and clout than Gillis.

That’s how.

Still, shouldn’t the show have Gillis’ back? Why hasn’t Lorne Michaels, the show’s founder and guiding light, said anything to defend his own guest host?

Well, “SNL” finally spoke up on the issue. Or, at least the UK version of the show did.

‘SNL UK’ Roasts Shane Gillis Over ‘Whores’ Joke, Calls Him a ‘F***ing C***’ https://t.co/6GrUeY9zPl

— TMZ (@TMZ) October 18, 2026

It’s merely the latest installment of Comedians Against Comedy. Oh, and it’s not even funny, to boot.

RELATED: COMEDIANS AGAINST COMEDY: GOLDBERG, COLBERT AND MORE 

So has “SNL” always been so cowardly? That wasn’t the case in the show’s earliest years. By all accounts, the show pushed social boundaries, hired edgy comedians and made a lot of people uncomfortable.

Imagine how the Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor word association sketch on race would land today. That’s comedy courage, whether you admire the routine or not.

A new documentary on a key “SNL” alum reminds us that the show hasn’t been brave in some time.

Director Judd Apatow’s new Netflix documentary “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald” recalls why the comedy legend got canned by “SNL.”

It’s not a state secret.

Macdonald doubled down on jokes tied to the O.J. Simpson case in the mid-1990s. Here’s one example:

“O.J. Simpson’s lawyers say they don’t want the families of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman in the courtroom during the trial. They’re afraid the presence of the family members will just remind O.J. of how much killing he still has to do.”

Simpson had powerful allies, including Don Ohlmeyer, a key player at NBC at the time. Ohlmeyer would fire Macdonald for those quips, including his take on the former NFL great’s not guilty verdict.

“Well, it is finally official: Murder is legal in the state of California.”

So NBC canned arguably the best Weekend Update anchor in the show’s 50-plus year history (Chevy Chase and Dennis Miller may disagree, but Macdonald’s tenure was legendary. Period).

Did Michaels stand up for Macdonald at the time? What about the cast and main players behind the scenes?

It’s old news now. What’s new? “SNL” is regime comedy. It supports and defends Democrats at all costs. Any GOP figure, though, is fair game.

Now, a show like “SNL” could have its biases. What we’ve seen for more than a decade now is so one-sided, so cartoonishly progressive, that it’s crushed the show’s once-mighty reputation.

Then again, maybe it was never as good as we all thought. It hasn’t been brave in decades.

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