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Saturday Night Live

Cecily Strong Leapfrogs SNL's Fake News Team To Host The Nation's Biggest News/Comedy Event

Tara's not a crackpot. She just thinks Cecily Strong's White House Correspondents' Dinner gig is a bad omen for Weekend Update's Jost/Che era.

Tara Ariano
 

The next White House Correspondents' Dinner won't be held until next spring, but apparently it's not too early to start speculating about what it might be like, since its host has just been announced: Cecily Strong booked the gig. Strong will be the fourth woman to host the dinner, and -- unless she gets fired between now and then -- the third SNL cast member. (Fifth overall: the dinner has also been hosted, on two occasions each, by Al Franken and Conan O'Brien, but both were writers and, in Franken's case, a sometime performer; and in both those cases, their time on SNL had been long over by the time they were tapped to host the WHCD.) Strong is, in this correspondent's opinion, an excellent choice for the job, but not the most obvious, in that she was removed from her post as Weekend Update co-anchor between Seasons 39 and 40. So it's weird that she'd be asked to helm the biggest night in news/comedy...or is it?!

I am not a crackpot. I just think Strong getting this job over Colin Jost or Michael Che is a vote of no-confidence in them as a Weekend Update anchor team.

Full disclosure: I have been bitching about Jost since he took over for Seth Meyers earlier this year.

And when they brought in Che to replace Strong this fall, I remained unimpressed.

They filled me with so much rage that I sometimes didn't even bother trying to be witty about it.

My personal antipathy aside, if either or both of Jost and Che had been invited to host the dinner, I would have thought nothing of it. For one thing, it's not like I expect the WHCA to go with an edgy choice given how badly it can backfire when it does. But, more importantly, if someone from SNL gets asked to host the WHCD, it logically should be someone who has something to do with SNL's fake-news segment -- like past Update anchor Seth Meyers (who hosted the WHCD in 2011). Sure, the third at-the-time-current SNL cast member other than Meyers and Strong who appears on the WHCD hosts' list is Darrell Hammond, who never anchored Update. But he...did play Bill Clinton for most of that President's time in office, and did his WHCD hosting duties in character as Clinton.

So what does it mean that Jost and Che were passed over? Is it just that they're so new that the WHCA doesn't trust that audiences would know who they are? Or is this a public acknowledgement of what I've been saying along: THAT THEY SUPER-SUCK?!

Both these guys have obvious strikes against them. Jost started off his very first broadcast with an incredibly cringey speech about his dreams coming true or whatever the fuck and then DIDN'T FOLLOW IT UP WITH A JOKE. Stop being earnest, you weirdo! Meanwhile, I feel like fewer people know Che from his job on SNL than for his bold pro-street harassment stance. Lorne Michaels doesn't always reverse himself, but it does happen -- remember how Chris Parnell got fired and then un-fired? -- and maybe he should take the WHCA's host choice as a hint that he was wrong to remove Strong from her post and MUCH WRONGER to put the charisma vacuums Colin Jost and Michael Che in front of any of his cameras. I am not a crackpot.

Tara Ariano