Commentary: As outrage over Shane Gillis' 'SNL' monologue has grown, one person has kept quiet

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred The biggest surprise about Shane Gillis’ controversial “Saturday Night Live” monologue last week, if you’re someone who watches the show consistently, is how unsurprising it was.An uproar has emerged about the comedian’s stand-up style monologue, in which he said he hit his “fat rock bottom,” comparing his appearance in a beer commercial to that of a lesbian.Then he discussed going to the gym for the first time in a long time and described the way women dress there like this: “I didn’t know women just dressed like w— now.”But if you’d already watched Gillis’ previous appearances — in 2024 and 2025 — the style of the jokes was familiar.

You had to expect a queasy mix of homophobia and misogyny, if not jokes that were racist or at the expense of people with Down syndrome, as in his previous monologues.That’s part of the reason Gillis was fired from “SNL” in the first place shortly after being brought on as a cast member in 2019: Gillis’ social media posts resurfaced with racist slurs, including one aimed at Chinese people.Now, the most recent monologue has drawn criticism from not just media pundits and social media influencers, but also celebrities, including Dan Levy, and more significantly, from people within the “SNL” family.They include “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che, who bemoaned all the questions he’d be getting about it on the press tour for his new Netflix special (“Thanks a lot, Shane,” he wrote on Instagram; Che might actually be joking).

Entertainment & Arts ‘Saturday Night Live’ writer and performer Michael Che returns to Netflix with his first special in five years, testing jokes about race, language and politics, and opening with material about Charlie Kirk’s murder.But the criticism also included posts from women, includi...