8.2.09

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch! Bradley Cooper Edition!

After a fairly bland week with Steve Martin hosting, we're back up to countable instancing this time around.

The 'guys singing' segment, which regularly features rape and homophobia as the subject matter, did not disappoint tonight, even going so far as to throw an incest joke into the mix. The premise of the sketch is that four guys sign along to a favorite song of theirs, and then tell a banal story with an offensive punchline. Tonight's joke of note concerned a man who was complaining about the perils of internet dating because a man showed up at his door... when he was expecting a 12 year old boy! Paedophilia is rape, so that one counts.

Homophobia was as well-represented as ever, with the second sketch of the night taking the form of a Today show parody, where the only significant joke was that their guest was an incredibly effeminate male fashion designer. And, of course, because the fantasy paedophilia victim was male, that counts as another example of homophobia, as it's a joke that reinforces the old saw that child molestation is a crime committed by gay men on little boys.

So, the tally this week is:

Rape: 1
Homophobia: 2

For the record, the high point of the show was Bradley Cooper's Christian Bale impression, which was spot on, even while the sketch that contained it was deeply lame.

Notably bad? Andy Samberg's 'Hans Gruber' impression. Yikes. It was like he'd never seen Die Hard.

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