As you probably know, this past weekend marked the 40th anniversary for Saturday Night Live. Comedy snob or not, you have to admit this is a remarkable achievement. (Yes you do.) Forget the debate about which era was best, which was worst, and whether or not the show should even be on the air anymore. It has a lot of issues but it’s 90 minutes of original comedy, every week. That’s crazy to me. It took me over a year to write five minutes of stand up material I didn’t hate. Forget about whether the show should be that long, it’s just not an easy thing to do.
And yet Rolling Stone has deemed some guy, Rob Sheffield, capable of ranking all 141 cast members in the history of Saturday Night Live. Lists like these are subjective, stupid and, of course, meaningless. And yes, I don’t agree with the rankings. I didn’t have to get past Norm Macdonald at #135 to know I didn’t need to read the rest of them. Whoever this guy is, he’s entitled to his opinion. (He might not even be behind the actual rankings, but his name is on them.) What I really take issue with is his mean-spirited, dismissive write-ups for some of the cast members.
Every single one of these people contributed more culturally to the world in one sketch than Rob Sheffield ever will writing hot take click-bait garbage like that article. (Not to mention his rankings of the best SNL Characters ever.) This is the kind of arts “journalism” that made me quit writing criticism. It doesn’t contribute anything to the world. And neither does the guy writing it.
But in the spirit of hot takes and jumping on a cultural event to garner site traffic, I now present to you my insanely lazy, ruthlessly quick ranking of every Terrible Rolling Stone SNL Article Writers ever!
1. Rob Sheffield
I don’t know who Rob Sheffield is and neither do you. Let’s check back in with him on the 40th anniversary of his SNL article.
HAAS PARTY 