SNL goes after inconsistent responses to misconduct in 'Sexual Harassment Charlie'
After coming under criticism for being too slow to address sexual misconduct allegations against media figures like producer Harvey Weinstein, Saturday Night Live has been making up for lost time. The latest episode sees the subject pop up in the cold open, a Weekend Update segment, and a sketch called "Sexual Harassment Charlie."
The scene is an office workplace, where two newly fired employees — James Franco's CFO Doug and Kenan Thompson's elderly front desk man, Charlie — are apologizing to their female coworkers for past sexual harassment. Doug apologizes for inappropriate nicknames and compliments, while Charlie is sorry for making comments like, "If I was 11 years younger, I'd put you in a large sack, throw you in the trunk of my Eldorado, drive you to my sister's house with a big old medical bed, crack open the windows, and show you a good old time for 28 minutes."
Where Doug's apologies are met with renewed disgust, the women wave away Charlie's vivid retelling of his far more serious misconduct as "Charlie being Charlie." The skit's interrogation of inconsistencies in how we respond to harassment ends with an unexpected twist. Watch the whole thing below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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