Open Letter to Fred Armisen: The Cultural Power and Responsibility of SNL

To Mr. Fred Armisen, 

As a great admirer of your artistic works, your puckish spirit, and your myriad wonderful and humorous contributions to the world, I find it extremely difficult to express the conflict that arises when I've considered writing you this letter.  

It's almost like imagining writing a letter to a musical hero like Miles Davis in which you tell him that a single, 32-bar, trumpet solo that he improvised in one concert in 1967 was potentially and partially responsible for influencing a chain of events which resulted in mass murder.  

Yikes! Why do such a thing?

Well, if I deeply felt that there was some truth in such an analysis—and if I had ample evidence to support my analysis—I would certainly not hesitate to speak my mind in hopes that my perspective, once communicated, could set into motion another chain of events that could ultimately be redemptive and healing. 

So here is such a truth I'd like to impart to you and to anyone you are still in contact with who was involved:

There is one short skit from your career with SNL that troubles me greatly to this day. For almost 16 years I have not been able to fully express the confusion, anger, and sadness that this seemingly insignificant moment in TV history has caused me.       

The skit was called "U.N. Weapons Inspectors" from the SNL live show on December 7th, 2002, or from Season 28, Episode 07. In this skit, Jimmy Fallon and Robert De Niro played "tough cop" versions of UN weapons inspectors. With some bravado, they knock upon a palace door in Iraq and your Iraqi character opens the door, "Yes?".  "You got weapons?", De Niro barks.  

Your character dramatically shifts his eyes back and forth before presenting an obviously artificial, "No."  Then De Niro's character says, "Okay, okay," as the door closes and they back away. The narrator concludes, "U.N. Weapons Inspectors. Keeping the peace. For a least a few more months."

I vividly recalled that skit again for the first time a few months later, as I was heading down to march in the streets and protest the coming war.   I thought about it once again once as war began.  And from time to time in the last 16 years I have thought about it.

Knowing what we know now about...

1)  the ties between Vice President Cheney and international energy interest Halliburton (which made $39.5 Billion from the war,) 

2) President G. W. Bush's complete reliance on the Vice President's "foreign policy expertise" at the beginning of his presidency, 

3) the evidence of the manipulation of bad or uncertain intelligence used by the Bush administration to fit preconceived objectives,

4) the evidence of the manipulation of Secretary of State Colin Powell and his staff via said faulty intelligence, 

5) the media's ability to manufacture the consent of the public, 

6) and finally, about the horrors and unfathomable suffering which that unnecessary war of choice has wrought upon the world, 

....I can't imagine that you don't feel a sting when you think back to that moment in the lead up the the Iraq War.

A super-majority 72% of the American public supported the Iraq War in March of 2003. In 2015 poll, long after WMDs were never found by the American military, a shocking number of Americans still believed WMDs were found in Iraq (42%.)  

Did that SNL skit contribute to conveying the narrative that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction?  Impossible to say, of course, but I wonder if the writers and actors at SNL ever considered this question.  

Have you? Has Fallon or De Niro?

Is there a sense of the cultural impact and cultural responsibility at SNL?

I understand that SNL is comedy not journalism. But the given the epistemological problems of the age of the Internet, do we not all have a responsibility to promote facts and truth as best we can, even in mediums like comedy?

Thanks for reading my thoughts and for considering these questions. If you feel moved to present this letter to others involved at SNL, please do.  My hope would be for some thoughtful discussions to emerge, especially as we are poised to enter a new presidential election season very soon. 

Best regards, 

Sean Frenette, musician