Dave Chappelle to host yet another post-election SNL

In what is apparently now a regular tradition, even for the mid-terms, Saturday Night Live has announced that its next host after Tuesday’s election will be none other than Dave Chappelle, following his previous hosting gigs on November 7, 2020, and November 12, 2016—both of them being the first episodes after the presidential election. In 2020, pre-election, we questioned the rationale of tempting fate like that by setting us up for any kind of repeat of 2016, but now we can’t help but question the rationale of the whole goddamn thing.

Since he last hosted SNL, Chappelle released “The Closer” on Netflix, a comedy special that was quickly condemned by GLAAD over transphobic comments from Chappelle, leading to a walkout at Netflix that inspired co-CEO Ted Sarandos to really think about who he was letting onto his platform and what sort of damage could be done by what they were saying. Actually, no, his company later released a similarly transphobic comedy special from Ricky Gervais, and Sarandos insisted that “nobody would say that what [Chappelle] does isn’t thoughtful or smart” and that it’s Netflix’s goal to offer “something for everybody”—even, apparently, people who just fucking suck.

Anyway: SNL! They’ve certainly had a lot of shitty people host over the last few years, including a billionaire asshole and a fake-millionaire asshole (he’s a real asshole but a fake millionaire), so there’s a zero percent chance that any backlash to Chappelle hosting again will impact the show in any real way. So… whatever. The musical guest will be Black Star.

Also, while we’re talking about the past repeating itself, Chappelle’s episode on Saturday will air two weeks after the return of Tom Hanks’ David S. Pumpkins, who made his debut in 2016 in an episode that aired two weeks before Chappelle’s 2016 episode. Does that mean something, or is it just that Halloween happens a few weeks before election day?