'Recruit Rosie': When Satire Joins the Resistance
“If called I will serve,” the comedian said of the requests that she play Steve Bannon on <em>Saturday Night Live</em>. It was a joke—and, also, extremely serious.
It went, roughly, like this: Over the weekend, Melissa McCarthy made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, making sweaty, swaggery fun of Donald Trump’s combative press secretary, Sean Spicer. On Monday, Politico reported that Trump had been angered by SNL’s mockery of Spicer—not, it contended, because of McCarthy’s eviscerating portrayal of him, but because of the person of McCarthy herself. “More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts,” Politico noted, “it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him.” As a top Trump donor added, bringing another voice to an idea that: “Trump doesn’t like his people to look weak.”
