In recent years, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has followed the late-night trend of waging a self-righteous “humor” war on President Donald Trump. Almost every show begins with a Trump-mocking skit, and the “Weekend Update” fake newscast is heavily laden with snide comments about Trump and his conservative coterie.
What caused thumping outrage this week was comedian Shane Gillis, who was announced as an incoming “SNL” cast member in 2019 before getting canceled almost immediately for some anti-Asian jokes. His opening monologue this week was denounced for joking, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long. I didn’t know women just dress like whores now. Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it, the shorts. Have you seen the shorts? Those neon, they’re, like, artificial vape-colored. The wrinkles go, like, around the cheeks and combine at the butthole.”
What drew less attention was the second half of it, Gillis mocking himself, or men in general: “And don’t look. You’re not allowed to look. For real, don’t look, because they are filming. I’m in the background of like 10 TikToks right now.”
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The first broadcast network to pounce on Gillis was actually NBC, on NBCNews.com. Reporter Rebecca Cohen lamented: “Gillis, who is known for his raunchy style of comedy, has a history of placing women — and other marginalized groups — at the butt of jokes. Many people called it tone-deaf of Gillis to make such comments following the reports around a former Cornell University student who alleged she was gang-raped at an on-campus fraternity house in 2024.”
“Many people” were represented by feminist author Jessica Valenti: “This is his contribution to that conversation,” she said. “This is him telling us what he thinks of the discourse on sexual assault. … That is rape culture.”
NBC’s “Today” picked it up on air on Tuesday in the fourth hour. “I wouldn’t want my kids to listen to that,” co-host Jenna Bush Hager said. “It feels mean,” co-host Sheinelle Jones agreed. “And that is the energy that I think made people upset.”
“Today” also put the controversy on TV when fake “Weekend Update” anchor Michael Che came on to promote his new Netflix special. “How are you thinking about what happened this week with Shane’s opening monologue?” substitute host Laura Jarrett asked. “You’ve seen the pushback.”
Che replied: “That’s comedy. It’s like, you think it’s funny and then some people don’t.” Jarrett asked Che if he laughed in real time. He denied seeing it in real time, as he prepared for his skit. Che also did an interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” but they never brought Gillis up.
NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben posted an angry thread on Bluesky: “I know this is nothing you haven’t heard before but like In the year of our Lord 2026 a dude went on the big comedy sketch institution program and said ‘lol women dress like whores’ and … it’s all fine and good? It’s not all over my feeds? Is it bc no one watches SNL or like I dunno normal misogyny?” Profanity followed.
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On ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sara Haines picked up the “rape culture” spin: “When the language like ‘whore’ is passed along, I might have not noticed it before in the past, because it was under the guise of a joke. And as we’re talking about this Cornell 7, I’m not saying a joke makes an assault, but it makes it much easier to look at it as another human as an object.”
It wasn’t misogyny, apparently, on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” when the host displayed a picture of then-White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia in skin-tight gym clothes to make fun of how unqualified she was: “Katie met a number of qualifications for the job. She has blonde hair. She can do a thumbs up, and end of list. Really, what else do you need? Where do they all get that same face? Is that makeup, or do they have a machine that stamps it on?”
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By the time the Gillis controversy was picked up on “CBS Mornings” on Oct. 14, there was at least a debate of sorts. Co-host Nate Burleson set it up: “The question is: Is he being targeted unfairly by cancel culture, or does he deserve all of this criticism he’s getting?” After running through outraged clips, co-host Adriana Diaz admitted Gillis “recently broke a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance ever at a comedy show with nearly 74,000 audience members.”
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But they kept up the anti-women angle: “Sophie Carpenter is a fitness coach and content creator. She worries jokes like the one Gillis made Saturday could discourage some women from working out altogether.”
All this fuss might cause the sneaking suspicion that NBC wanted its comedy “institution” to make news, which would explain why they were the first ones out of the gate in denouncing it. It’s likely this will only help Gillis, just as he built his career on getting canceled by NBC in the first place.