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LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S MICHAEL CHE’S WEIRD FIXATION WITH ME
My feud with the ‘Saturday Night Live’ head writer has lasted several months all because I said his show was unfunny.
Photo by FilmMagic/FilmMagic
Jack AllisonJAN—22—2020 10:02AM EST
Michael Che, the head writer of Saturday Night Live and host of Weekend Update, can’t stop talking about me. It began last June, when SNL launched a website to take open writer submissions. The submission agreement included the same type of standard language you’ll find in any writing submission, absolving the show from claims of theft should any future segments end up similar to submitted material. But the SNL submission included a unique clause, one I’d never seen before, basically stipulating that if you include a link to your social media, everything on it would be considered submitted material, and subject to the same legal absolution.
I thought it was notable that SNL was essentially giving themselves the power to cherry pick the feeds of anyone who submits, so I did what I always do when something is even mildly annoying to me: I made a nasty little post about it on Twitter. I posted screenshots from the submission document with the pithy caption “The funniest thing about the SNL Writing Submission site is it absolves then from stealing your ideas, and then also says if you include a link to your social media it counts for everything you’ve ever posted as well.” At first, the post got maybe a dozen retweets.
When I posted this, I didn’t tag the show, nor mention any of its employees by name. But within 15 minutes, Michael Che found my post, and reposted it to his Instagram Story. Over the screenshot was a big block of white text reading “lol the shyt people worry about.. i think you’ll be fine, man.” He followed up with a screenshot of a DM from a follower asking who I am, to which Che responded “hes one of those bearded white guys with glasses that hates snl, not much about his personal life on there, but im sure its awesome.”
I am a bearded white guy with glasses who hates SNL, so for one of the few times in this piece I will award Michael Che some credit. The reason why I hate modern SNL is very simple: I’ve watched it. This is a show that happily invited Donald Trump to host when he was merely a super racist presidential candidate, and then went on to do the weakest political comedy of all-time during his presidency. (Last year’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” parody singalong with all the members of the Trump cabinet, and the Deal Or No Deal sketch that culminated in Trump choosing a box of “hamberders” stand out as particularly low lows.) Since 2015’s SNL40 40th anniversary special, the show, which has always featured celebrity guests, seems more reliant on cameos and stunt-casting than ever — whether it’s every member of Trump’s cabinet being portrayed by a movie star, or an SNL cast-member from only a decade ago showing up to raucous applause sign applause for the tenth time this season. There are some very talented comedians who work on SNL, such as Bowen Yang and Kyle Mooney; unfortunately, that’s not evident in the quality of the show.
In a follow-up post, Che revealed the reason why my criticism specifically bothered him so much: “he works for kimmel. i love kimmel.” This wasn’t correct — I quit Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2016 — but it showed that Che was motivated to respond to my critique because it came from a fellow writer of late-night network variety TV. Were I still a professional TV writer desperate to remain employed in the industry, I’m exactly the kind of person who would never say a negative word about SNL publicly. But after my two years at JKL, I decided that I didn’t really want to work in variety-sketch anymore, thus freeing myself from the entertainment industry omertà on ever saying that any TV show or movie is bad. I’ve relished in this newfound freedom — you’ll know and maybe even be annoyed by it if you follow me on Twitter — but it’s nice after over a decade to finally be allowed to say publicly what I’ve always said privately among friends.
Che was fixated on me for the rest of the day, sending out another Instagram Story with an absolutely baffling dunk about how I hate dodgeball and “restaurants where you have to take off your shoes.” His posting culminated in a mantra I’ve seen repeated time and time again. In block text, he wrote, “im always baffled by comics that publicly shyt on comedy jobs. here’s some unsolicited advice for people who wanna work in comedy, lol don’t do that. I mean, unless ‘twitter personality’ is your professional ceiling.. it’s a bad idea.” This is a common refrain from bosses in entertainment when they get called out online, but the fact is, Michael Che is probably right — if you’re looking to get hired on SNL, you probably shouldn’t do a bunch of posts about how SNL is bad. I am, of course, not trying to get hired on SNL, which rendered his point moot.
After our first day of back-and-forth, I thought I wouldn’t hear from Che again. I was very, very wrong. I would be going about my day-to-day life, before suddenly receiving a deluge of messages from people warning me that I was once again in the SNL head writer’s crosshairs. Then I’d be pulled into another back-and-forth, as I’d respond on Twitter and watch him reply on Instagram. Our correspondence was never direct, which allowed it to be nastier, and here I’ll admit some complicity: Had I not been so resolute in talking shyt, Che probably would’ve stopped. Alas, I was, because of how absurd the situation was, and so it continued. Sometimes weeks or whole months would go by with nothing, before all of a sudden, I made another appearance on his Instagram Story for his 400,000 followers.
There was the time we bickered about the function of the applause sign on SNL. There was the time he dunked on me for offering tuition-free slots in a class I was teaching. There was the time I posted about making Campbell’s tomato bisque wrong (I am not smart), and the next day Che spent the afternoon making fun of me for eating soup and saying that I must be “saving up for a gun.” He mocked a podcast I appeared on because the Patreon only costs $5 — between this and the large block text Instagram Stories, I’m forced to conclude that Michael Che is an early-onset Boomer. He spent the Friday afternoon before the David Harbour-hosted episode of SNL posting that I was “miserable” and also noting that I’d made a pie that afternoon, which to me just feels inherently contradictory.
In December, I went out of town to spend the holidays with my wife and dog. It was a great time; Cambria was beautiful, and we watched Little Women and Uncut Gems. While I was driving back home, the day after Christmas, I got a heads up that Che was posting about me once again. I went to his Instagram Story, and found that he had posted a DM from someone who holds a personal grudge against me that was filled with both lies (that I am a Trump supporter) and smears about my history and personal life (that I’ve done cocaine and gone to strip clubs). This latest round was so personal and such a clear attempt to “cancel” me that I couldn’t help but feel like this was bloodsport now. We were really playing for keeps. Again, this all started because I said the submission guidelines were weird and that the show sucks. Now I’ve got this TV personality millionaire spending his off time researching my history with drugs. (I’ll save him some time: I’ve done drugs and gone to strip clubs; I did not vote for Trump.)
It’s been very strange to have the co-head writer of America’s most storied comedic institution become preoccupied with me, hitting me with increasingly personal attacks and actively trying to destroy my reputation. If I had slightly thinner skin or any desire to ever work in Hollywood again, it would probably be pretty upsetting.
I’m not the only person Che has obsessed about in this way — he is extraordinarily attuned to online criticism, no matter how baseless the claims. Steven Hyden, a cultural critic for Uproxx, wrote a piece in April titled “Why Does Everyone (Still) Hate SNL’s Colin Jost?” which caught him Che’s ire. “Che apparently didn’t like the column, and he decided to mock me on his Instagram,” Hyden told me. “He called me a ‘mediocre ass white dude’ and then said I like to ‘suck off rescue dogs.’ ... Also, someone — can't say it was Che, though it happened immediately after he went into his tirade against me — went into my Wikipedia page and changed it to reflect my supposed preference for having sex with canines.” (I’m just glad, once again, not to be notable enough for a Wikipedia page.)
My feud with the ‘Saturday Night Live’ head writer has lasted several months all because I said his show was unfunny.
Photo by FilmMagic/FilmMagic
Jack AllisonJAN—22—2020 10:02AM EST
Michael Che, the head writer of Saturday Night Live and host of Weekend Update, can’t stop talking about me. It began last June, when SNL launched a website to take open writer submissions. The submission agreement included the same type of standard language you’ll find in any writing submission, absolving the show from claims of theft should any future segments end up similar to submitted material. But the SNL submission included a unique clause, one I’d never seen before, basically stipulating that if you include a link to your social media, everything on it would be considered submitted material, and subject to the same legal absolution.
I thought it was notable that SNL was essentially giving themselves the power to cherry pick the feeds of anyone who submits, so I did what I always do when something is even mildly annoying to me: I made a nasty little post about it on Twitter. I posted screenshots from the submission document with the pithy caption “The funniest thing about the SNL Writing Submission site is it absolves then from stealing your ideas, and then also says if you include a link to your social media it counts for everything you’ve ever posted as well.” At first, the post got maybe a dozen retweets.
When I posted this, I didn’t tag the show, nor mention any of its employees by name. But within 15 minutes, Michael Che found my post, and reposted it to his Instagram Story. Over the screenshot was a big block of white text reading “lol the shyt people worry about.. i think you’ll be fine, man.” He followed up with a screenshot of a DM from a follower asking who I am, to which Che responded “hes one of those bearded white guys with glasses that hates snl, not much about his personal life on there, but im sure its awesome.”
I am a bearded white guy with glasses who hates SNL, so for one of the few times in this piece I will award Michael Che some credit. The reason why I hate modern SNL is very simple: I’ve watched it. This is a show that happily invited Donald Trump to host when he was merely a super racist presidential candidate, and then went on to do the weakest political comedy of all-time during his presidency. (Last year’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” parody singalong with all the members of the Trump cabinet, and the Deal Or No Deal sketch that culminated in Trump choosing a box of “hamberders” stand out as particularly low lows.) Since 2015’s SNL40 40th anniversary special, the show, which has always featured celebrity guests, seems more reliant on cameos and stunt-casting than ever — whether it’s every member of Trump’s cabinet being portrayed by a movie star, or an SNL cast-member from only a decade ago showing up to raucous applause sign applause for the tenth time this season. There are some very talented comedians who work on SNL, such as Bowen Yang and Kyle Mooney; unfortunately, that’s not evident in the quality of the show.
In a follow-up post, Che revealed the reason why my criticism specifically bothered him so much: “he works for kimmel. i love kimmel.” This wasn’t correct — I quit Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2016 — but it showed that Che was motivated to respond to my critique because it came from a fellow writer of late-night network variety TV. Were I still a professional TV writer desperate to remain employed in the industry, I’m exactly the kind of person who would never say a negative word about SNL publicly. But after my two years at JKL, I decided that I didn’t really want to work in variety-sketch anymore, thus freeing myself from the entertainment industry omertà on ever saying that any TV show or movie is bad. I’ve relished in this newfound freedom — you’ll know and maybe even be annoyed by it if you follow me on Twitter — but it’s nice after over a decade to finally be allowed to say publicly what I’ve always said privately among friends.
Che was fixated on me for the rest of the day, sending out another Instagram Story with an absolutely baffling dunk about how I hate dodgeball and “restaurants where you have to take off your shoes.” His posting culminated in a mantra I’ve seen repeated time and time again. In block text, he wrote, “im always baffled by comics that publicly shyt on comedy jobs. here’s some unsolicited advice for people who wanna work in comedy, lol don’t do that. I mean, unless ‘twitter personality’ is your professional ceiling.. it’s a bad idea.” This is a common refrain from bosses in entertainment when they get called out online, but the fact is, Michael Che is probably right — if you’re looking to get hired on SNL, you probably shouldn’t do a bunch of posts about how SNL is bad. I am, of course, not trying to get hired on SNL, which rendered his point moot.
After our first day of back-and-forth, I thought I wouldn’t hear from Che again. I was very, very wrong. I would be going about my day-to-day life, before suddenly receiving a deluge of messages from people warning me that I was once again in the SNL head writer’s crosshairs. Then I’d be pulled into another back-and-forth, as I’d respond on Twitter and watch him reply on Instagram. Our correspondence was never direct, which allowed it to be nastier, and here I’ll admit some complicity: Had I not been so resolute in talking shyt, Che probably would’ve stopped. Alas, I was, because of how absurd the situation was, and so it continued. Sometimes weeks or whole months would go by with nothing, before all of a sudden, I made another appearance on his Instagram Story for his 400,000 followers.
There was the time we bickered about the function of the applause sign on SNL. There was the time he dunked on me for offering tuition-free slots in a class I was teaching. There was the time I posted about making Campbell’s tomato bisque wrong (I am not smart), and the next day Che spent the afternoon making fun of me for eating soup and saying that I must be “saving up for a gun.” He mocked a podcast I appeared on because the Patreon only costs $5 — between this and the large block text Instagram Stories, I’m forced to conclude that Michael Che is an early-onset Boomer. He spent the Friday afternoon before the David Harbour-hosted episode of SNL posting that I was “miserable” and also noting that I’d made a pie that afternoon, which to me just feels inherently contradictory.
In December, I went out of town to spend the holidays with my wife and dog. It was a great time; Cambria was beautiful, and we watched Little Women and Uncut Gems. While I was driving back home, the day after Christmas, I got a heads up that Che was posting about me once again. I went to his Instagram Story, and found that he had posted a DM from someone who holds a personal grudge against me that was filled with both lies (that I am a Trump supporter) and smears about my history and personal life (that I’ve done cocaine and gone to strip clubs). This latest round was so personal and such a clear attempt to “cancel” me that I couldn’t help but feel like this was bloodsport now. We were really playing for keeps. Again, this all started because I said the submission guidelines were weird and that the show sucks. Now I’ve got this TV personality millionaire spending his off time researching my history with drugs. (I’ll save him some time: I’ve done drugs and gone to strip clubs; I did not vote for Trump.)
It’s been very strange to have the co-head writer of America’s most storied comedic institution become preoccupied with me, hitting me with increasingly personal attacks and actively trying to destroy my reputation. If I had slightly thinner skin or any desire to ever work in Hollywood again, it would probably be pretty upsetting.
I’m not the only person Che has obsessed about in this way — he is extraordinarily attuned to online criticism, no matter how baseless the claims. Steven Hyden, a cultural critic for Uproxx, wrote a piece in April titled “Why Does Everyone (Still) Hate SNL’s Colin Jost?” which caught him Che’s ire. “Che apparently didn’t like the column, and he decided to mock me on his Instagram,” Hyden told me. “He called me a ‘mediocre ass white dude’ and then said I like to ‘suck off rescue dogs.’ ... Also, someone — can't say it was Che, though it happened immediately after he went into his tirade against me — went into my Wikipedia page and changed it to reflect my supposed preference for having sex with canines.” (I’m just glad, once again, not to be notable enough for a Wikipedia page.)
