Sasheer Zamata

The 1/20 DM Register had a brief “People in the News” blurb about the Saturday Night Live debut of Sasheer Zamata. The liberal icon SNL got seriously whacked last fall when it was pointed out by their own, that out of 137 previous cast members, only 4 had been black females.

I can’t help but be a little admiring of Sasheer for having the guts to be on the show with such an embarrassing spotlight on herself. True, the spotlight should have been on Lorne Michaels (Lipowitz). Even though SNL is out of NYC, it is all part of the entertainment industry, whose flagship, Hollywood, has one of the most blatant track records of racial discrimination, yet never gets called on it.

The history of Hollywood is the history of exclusion. It continues to this day. The seventies had more diversity, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Different Stokes, Webster, among others. Today it is just embarrassing. Look at the primetime offerings, who do you see? 30 years after The Cosby Show, where is the inclusion? Hollywood has always been rife with a Jim Crow mentality, and this latest indictment of SNL almost makes you feel sorry for them. But I don’t.

Who did you see in the old movies? Unless it was the occasional maid or butler, you saw white people. What did you see on old TV? Did Bonanza or the Andy Griffith Show ever have a black person on it? Pretty sure they didn’t. How about more modern TV, like The Golden Girls? Lots of diversity on there was it?

The irony of it all is there is no more liberal a bastion than Hollywood, and there is none more racist. I wonder how it got that way? I wonder who controls it? It’s almost like their is a click there that works to keep out others that they feel don’t belong.

Looking at the history of comedy, Adam Sandler, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Richards, Jason Alexander, Brad Garrett, Billy Crystal, Jon Stewart, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Madeline Kahn, Joan Rivers, Mel Brooks, Milton Berle, George Burns, the Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Albert Brooks, Fran Drescher, Fanny Brice, Ben Stiller, Henny Youngman, Don Rickles, Larry David, Rodney Dangerfield, Seth Rogen, Richard Lewis, Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder… it is almost like there is a common thread tying them all together, I just can’t put my finger on it. Almost tribal in nature. Not that I’m saying publishing, broadcasting, movies, and the music industry are dominated by one group.

So when SNL got busted for their exclusionary behavior, I was not completely surprised. My only surprise was how long it took the public to begin to get an inkling of what has been going on for over 100 years.