Saturday Night Live Unchained

First, I have to admit that it has been many, many years since I’ve watched SNL—we're talking Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy days here. So I missed last week’s skit, a parody of Quentin Tarantino movies in general and his most recent, DJango Unchained, in particular. Granted, parody is Saturday Night Live’s bread and butter. Done well parody can be one of the funniest forms of humor. And some SNL parodies over the years have been hysterically funny. But it’s a delicate business, parody, and it’s easy to cross the line. SNL has crossed that line before, but never with the total abandon of this particular skit which featured the resurrected Christ as a bloodthirsty killer bent on revenge against the Romans. I was shocked when I read about this skit, shocked enough to go to http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-tarantino-movie/n32896/ and watch it for myself—something that I do not recommend unless you enjoy blasphemy, for that is the only word to describe this ill-conceived attempt at being funny. NBC can only take comfort in the fact that true followers of Christ are committed to a value system totally opposed to what is portrayed in this horrible skit. You may rest assured that the producers of SNL would never be so cavalier in making a comparable attack on the life and values of the founder of Islam. I doubt that Al Qaeda would rest at merely calling for a boycott.