Date: 2024-12-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00016368
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Senator Dianne Feinstein
INSULT TO INJURY ... ‘Step the f#$@ off’: Dianne Feinstein gets the SNL treatment
Peter Burgess
Want to relive the heated exchange? Saturday Night Live has you covered. In an unaired sketch, comedian Cecily Strong plays a feisty, condescending version of the Democratic senator. She did not hold back.
“Oh, I see what’s happening,” Strong tells the kids in the video. “You’re gonna tell me how to do my job. OK, well, I don’t come into your first-grade classroom and knock the Elmer’s glue out of your mouth, do I? So why don’t you stay in your lane and step the f#$@ off?”
As each attempt to talk to the kids goes awry, Strong keeps asking for a do-over. One kid states the obvious: “You’re mean.”
The skit is laugh-out-loud funny, but the producers cut the segment from Saturday’s live show. That decision may have been due to time constraints — the sketches ran longer than normal, according to Rolling Stone. But it may also be a sign that SNL’s producers, like Feinstein, might be a little out of touch on climate change.
There’s another indication that SNL doesn’t know what’s up: In the sketch, one of the children holds up a cute sign that says “Save the Whales.” Seems innocuous, right? Well, the purpose of the protesters’ visit to the senator’s office wasn’t to save ocean creatures — it was to get Feinstein on board with the Green New Deal.
“SNL writers/editors thought that made sense, that climate change — the real subject of the visit — is another version of esoteric critter-saving,” tweeted Vox’s David Roberts, a former Grist writer.
While climate change affects every ecosystem on Earth, “saving the whales” overlooks the point of the Green New Deal. Rather, its intent is to propose an economy-wide transformation that links renewable energy with policies such as universal healthcare and a federal jobs guarantee, addressing that climate change and inequality coexist.