Saturday Night Live isn’t afraid to make fun of their own. That much proved true during this week’s cold open, in which Kate McKinnon — in the persona of Fox News host Laura Ingraham — took a jab at an SNL regular: Alec Baldwin.
Near the end of the sketch, McKinnon’s Ingraham says, “When we come back, an update from disgraced former actor Alec Baldwin — seen here molesting a young Boy Scout.” Her screen then cuts to a picture of Baldwin and Adam Sandler, which SNL fans would recognize as Baldwin’s Scoutmaster and Sandler’s Canteen Boy from a classic sketch.
The reference to Baldwin comes after his arrest this weekend due to allegedly punching a man in New York over a parking spot altercation. Accordingly, Baldwin — who typically impersonates Donald Trump in politically charged SNL segments — was noticeably absent from any sketches this week.
But while referencing one of their own in the wake of an undoubtedly embarrassing personal incident is arguably a dig, the reference to Baldwin clearly had a satiric slant.
Throughout McKinnon’s cold open, she played on the tendency of Fox’s Ingraham (and other conservative political talking heads) to over-dramatize.
While discussing the controversy surrounding the current migrant caravan, video examples featured by Ingraham purporting to show the caravan included a mob of customers storming a shopping center during the holidays, a zombie apocalypse scene from the Brad Pitt film Z Nation and a swarm of fiddler crabs on the beach.
By having McKinnon’s Ingraham allude to Baldwin as a disgraced former actor accused of molesting a boy scout, SNL appears to have been using the sketch to capitalize on certain factions’ talent for hyperbole.
This conclusion can be drawn because (a) Baldwin is a working actor who obviously did not abuse a Boy Scout and (b) Baldwin issued a series of tweets accusing the media of sensationalizing his arrest.
In the tweets, Baldwin denied having punched the other man involved in the reported incident.
Although the police have not formally identified the man that Baldwin reportedly punched, Page Six identified him on Saturday as one Wojciech Cieszkowski. When asked how he was doing after the altercation, he reportedly told the outlet, “You know, sore, but I’ll be fine. I’m recovering.”
Page Six also reported that Cieszkowski had no visible marks on his face.
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