I check into Saturday Night Live once every 10 years or so for a few minutes, confirm it still sucks, and change the channel content in the knowledge this is one television program I can safely cross off the list of possible obligations on my time.

SNL’s modus operandi since roughly 1983 has been to a) transpose whatever are the prevailing mainstream jokes into overly long “skits” and b) create tortuously obscure jokes of their own into overwrought “skits.”

Out of curiosity what they would do with the current political season, I tuned in tonight. The Sarah Palin – Hillary Clinton bit at the beginning was ok, sort of in the “a” category. Riff on the obvious caricatures of each, ha ha ha.

The next segment ridiculing home schoolers as loony and public schooled kids as simply dumb was safely in the leftist pop culture genre, which is fine because no one with a brain should be watching this program so might as well write for the audience.

But, geez, how much are they paying these writers? It should be zero. Ragging on home schooled kids takes no imagination because you can pick the jokes right off the tree at any mainstream media outlet. EDGY would be to tell the truth that home schooled kids do exceptionally well on academic tests.

Back in the 1970s the show was edgy, challenging conventional culture, and original. For a brief flowering in the 1980s (the Christopher Guest-Martin Short-Billy Crystal era) it was at least original.

Since then it has just sucked, and now after seeing the next four or five bits, I can assure you it still sucks. God willing I will check it out again in 2018 – definitely no sooner.