SNL mocks Katie Britt

29 thoughts on “SNL mocks Katie Britt”

1. That cross Katie Britt wore should have burst into flames when she tried to link that horrible sex-trafficking tale to Biden. It did happen, but in Mexico and during George W. Bush’s administration.

2. Saw that earlier; quite hilarious and on the mark.
   My wife and daughter had separately said the Britt speech made them immediately think of the mean-girl character in the 1999? movie “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (which I’ve never seen).

3. I want to make fun of Katie Britt herself because she seems to have named her children after accounting firms (“Ridgeway Britt”). But I’m trying not to because naming your kids is super personal and maybe Ridgeway is a family name. Who knows?

   Wrt the speech I found it made a lot more sense when played back at 0.75x speed. She just sounds really really high.

   1. Mike, FYI. I think this explains it.
      https://open.substack.com/pub/jesspiper/p/the-fundie-baby-voice?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2xi1r

      1. For me, at least, that was very enlightening. Thank you, Stephen, for posting that link.

         1. 🙏

         2. +1

      2. Ah ok. Baptist Gesserit.

         1. 🙂👍

   2. Yep, who names their kid Ridgeway? It immediately sounded to me like a minivan model (Dodge Ridgeway?). I think there actually is a model of some vehicle that ends in -way, maybe from the late ’50s, but I can’t come up with it.

      1. Yep, who names their kid Ridgeway? It immediately sounded to me like a minivan model (Dodge Ridgeway?). I think there actually is a model of some vehicle that ends in -way, maybe from the late ’50s, but I can’t come up with it.

         [Edit} Just hit me! Dodge Kingsway! Export Dodge models from the ’50s.

4. Robert DeNiro was a guest on Bill Maher’s show on Friday, and when asked about her speech, he said it best: Lame. LOL! I seriously don’t know what the GOP is thinking nowadays. They are so backward-ass, out-of-touch, bereft of ideas, fake and shallow.

   1. I chalk it up to mis-targeted, mis-managed marketing. They appear to be aiming for their base as if that appeals to a much broader segment of the voting population. Hopefully, a large number of “traditional housewives” don’t actually mean it when they say, “Yes dear. I have your list with me and I’ll vote exactly as instructed”.

5. ScarJo!!! (I love Jewish women!) And Kenan always cracks me up.🤣

6. I hadn’t watched Britt’s speech until Jerry posted it. Thoughts:

   She is obviously nervous at the start. The strange vibe seems an amalgam of bad TV legal dramas and the Southern beauty pageant culture, the last most evident in the continual retreat to an insincere smile no matter the subject at hand. Then we have the obvious appeal to emotions devoid of policy. Overall: a big stage given to an inexperienced performer who will likely improve over time. The performance critiques could stop there. But, no, we are in enlightened America, so our pundit class needs to resort to ridicule and disdain.

   Was Britt cringeworthy? To my tastes, yes. But nor is she Marjorie Taylor Green or Lauren Boebert. Nor am I the target audience for her speech, and neither are the media pundits, credentialed classes of either political party, or any of the people who regularly read this site. I would like to see some good data on how the working class responded. I suspect few watched it. They don’t need to. When they hear it was panned by the media, SNL, and the credentialed class, the ones who care will assume she did okay, but neither this speech nor the criticisms will have any effect on the election.

   The tone of the critiques is telling—and is part of the problem with our political culture. Nine years into the Trump phenomenon, it simply reinforces to me that we have a sizeable class of highly-credentialed people who still cannot understand Trump’s appeal to the working class without resorting to the absurd claim that nearly half of Americans must be either idiots or fascist Nazis who want to destroy America. There seems little reflection on how far the Democratic party has drifted from that of JFK and RFK—particularly in its ATTITUDES toward the lesser-educated and lower classes. The black and Latino working class have started to figure that out. And they will increasingly vote accordingly—particularly as the generation of MLK Jr. fades away.

   1. I’m sorry but I think you’ve got it wrong. What we’re seeing are the fruits of fundamental Christianity playing out in America. These folks are brought up in closed environments, home-schooled, taught to believe that absurd religious ideas are literally true, and that science and expertise are suspect or worse.

      This is a frightening thing to me. But it is also laugh-out-loud hilarious. You can’t argue with these folk. But you can have a good laugh.

      1. Laugh at, but meanwhile worry very much that they will carry the election.

         I feel some relief about Biden’s good SOTU speech and the buzz around it. But dammit we need people to get energized and vote. A high turnout is good for Dems, I think.

         1. Indeed.

      2. “These folks are brought up in closed environments, home-schooled . . .”

         I’m not certain who “these folks” are to whom you refer, but your caricature shows little understanding of the extent of homeschooling in the US. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 1.7% of American students were homeschooled in 1999, increasing to 3.4% in 2012 and then declining again to 2.8% in 2019. (Now, thanks to some panic-driven and scientifically-uninformed policies during the pandemic, that number was driven much higher in the last few years.) Are you arguing that such a sliver of our population is driving either Trump support or the “fruits” of our political culture? Incidentally, both the fundamentalists and those Evangelicals who are not fundamentalists would love your use of that metaphor.

         I suspect you are conflating “fundamentalist” with Evangelical Protestant, the two groups overlapping but the latter group being much larger. Evangelicals are, indeed, still a significant slice of the electorate, boasting as one of their own the favorite ex-President of many people here. They also boast a quite large contingent of black Americans, who along with Hispanics have, on average, more moderate and conservative social views than do other members of the current Democratic coalition. But, please, continue the ridicule. It provides a great illustration to my original point about political culture and ATTITUDES.

         That probably sounds harsher than intended, as I agree with one of your closing points. It is as fruitless to argue with religious fundamentalists about their core convictions as it is to argue with the Woke–and as it is to argue with staunch partisans of either party persuasion.

         https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91

         1. Please. No lectures about American Protestantism are needed here. “These folks” are MAGA. Religious fanatics. And I think you knew perfectly well who I was referring to. They have been here hundreds of years and remain as close-minded as they were when they were chasing witches.

   2. “The black and Latino working class have started to figure that out. And they will increasingly vote accordingly—”

      Nope. Pretty much every poll that hints at your statement are push polls, not based in reality; Millennials and younger voters can’t be polled accurately anyway. Plus, Biden is the most pro-union, pro-working class POTUS we’ve had in decades. What, you think the Republicans are pro-union/working class in some alternate universe and minorities are “figuring it out,” gimme a break. Biden is the only POTUS since Reagan’s implementation of “trickle-down economics” that realizes trickle-down is a crock o’ shit. Also, a lot of Biden’s big accomplishments (CHIPS act, Infrastructure bill, money towards fighting climate change) are forward thinking pieces of legislation that many won’t feel for years to come. If we give him another 4 years and a (D) Congress to work with, (esp. a Senate that will kill the filibuster) there’s no telling what he can accomplish. One thing is for sure, he’ll accomplish a hell of a lot more than “in-it-for-me” Trump and his horde of sycophants.

      1. I think Democrats have been pushing many policies that are deeply unpopular with parents in particular. Jerry has highlighted many of them on these pages. I think both Republicans and Democrats are living in their own echo chambers and are clueless (or even dishonest) about how or why the other group makes its electoral decisions.

         1. Parents? Oh boy, I’m not one, but…I don’t see that, did you notice how “Mothers for Liberty” the anti-WOKE organization started in Florida (under DeSantis) who push anti-LGBTQ + book banning were wiped out last election? Jerry’s criticisms are true and fair, but very miniscule in the aggregate. Sure, everyone is in an echo chamber, but when the Republicans outlaw abortion and woman reproductive health care, the echo chamber resonates outside the boundary. The Dems have done nothing so destructive and anti-American.
            You’re playing the “both sides” bs that is so tiresome and patently false.

            1. No, I’m not saying both sides are equally bad. In any current election I would vote for a Democrat, and I have voted Democrat in every past national election. But I am saying that both sides are deaf to the other party, and the deafness of Democrats is especially upsetting to me because it makes them lose.

            2. Fair enough, thanks for your comment.

7. The true version of Britt’s human trafficking story is actually a strong argument in favor of letting asylum seekers come across the border to the US. Many are coming across the US border trying to escape that kind of abuse in Mexico and Central America. Katie Britt would like to turn them back over to the human traffickers.

   1. Everywhere, though, the international law of asylum is that it has to be granted (provisionally, pending a hearing) to people fleeing state persecution. You can’t summarily deny an asylum claim at the border. If Mexico, as a state, was running human trafficking gangs targeting either a specific asylum claimant who was now at the border, or a group that the asylum claimant appears to belong to (like the often persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses, say), then there would be a case for accepting an asylum claim. But if Mexico (or Honduras or Venezuela) is simply unable to protect its citizens from rampant criminal activity, that is not an asylum issue. Since Mexico is designated a safe third country, it really means that no one can make an asylum claim at the U.S.-Mexico border anyway. If they are fleeing persecution in Venezuela, or China, they should have claimed asylum in Mexico, not delayed until they got to your border. They should be turned back into Mexico, as Canada does to claimants at our land border with you, no matter where they started their journey.

      If a country wants to admit everyone fleeing civil chaos in a failed state, crossing wherever they feel like it, that is up to that country, fine. But it’s not how asylum is supposed to work. The reason for the distinction is partly practical. Each country assesses asylum claims differently but the principle is asylum claims (and the officials devoted to them) are supposed to be rare, much rarer than people hoping to better their economic lot. The asylum claim system is easily overwhelmed when migrants figure out that if they don’t have much to offer from an economic point of view they can make an asylum claim instead. The overburdened system will take years before it eventually disallows their claims and probably won’t succeed in deporting them. The ease of gaming each destination country’s asylum system is reported back home and encourages migration to countries known by testimonial to be soft touches. (Another draw of course is how good the gettin’ is in each one. If asylum claimants are allowed to work and send their kids to school, and the climate’s not too harsh, that is a big draw.)

      Again, there is nothing wrong with doing this if you want to, but it really marks you out for two things: One, you have an open-borders policy for people with no skills and possible undesirable views. Two, the only restrictions you are placing on immigration are on the solicited immigration of people who might be economically useful to you, because the green-card scheme is so restrictive.

      Canada struggles with this, too. Everyone knows our asylum scheme is broken, too, and they fly from everywhere in the world to claim persecution on arrival. But at least they could afford a plane ticket, so they can’t be all bad.

      1. Valid points, but in terms of basic human decency, it is irrelevant whether the danger is state-sponsored or not. I recognize that you are right, though; acting on basic human sentiments may not be practically viable.

8. My first thought after seeing the Britt response on Thursday was, please, please, please, Ceiling Cat, grant this poor wretch (me) a cold open on SNL!

   Little did I know that they would recruit ScarJo (also head writer Colin Jost’s wife) to do the job. Johansson is a wonderful actress with a precise command of her expression and voice. OMG, Ceiling Cat, tuna for you!

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