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Saturday Night Live’s reputation as a vehicle for biting political satire is overblown, especially by the show itself. Originally emerging from post-Watergate American counterculture comedy, SNL was quickly revealed as more revolutionary about the medium of television than about politics, the show’s performance-driven parade of characters and recurring bits more likely to kick against established TV norms than political ones. Still, there are times when a singularly biting satirical piece breaks through SNL and founding producer Lorne Michaels’ more middle-of-the-road sensibilities.

One such sketch titled “Conspiracy Theory Rock” aired on the March 14, 1998, episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Julianne Moore and featuring musical guests the Backstreet Boys. The piece in question featured neither of the night's guests or any of the cast but was instead the work of writer Robert Smigel, whose tenure on the show saw him setting up something of a one-man shop in the form of his animated “TV Funhouse” segments. A grab-bag of conceits alternately or concurrently tasteless and overtly satirical, the animated pieces gave the acerbic Smigel free reign to push boundaries and generally poke fun at everything from current events to corporate hypocrisy to even Saturday Night Live itself. (The open and close of every “TV Funhouse” sees an animated Michaels furiously chasing a cartoon pup whose mischievous ripping of the SNL screen reveals the “TV Funhouse” logo underneath, the cartoon Michaels imperiously demanding, “Come back here with my show!”)

Smigel’s smart-aleck reputation reached its infamous peak on the Moore episode (at least until he and his Late Show With Stephen Colbert crew were arrested for breaching Capitol security in 2022 in pursuit of lawmakers who’d talk to his most famous creation, the puppet instigator Triumph the Insult Comic Dog). “Conspiracy Theory Rock” expertly aped the style of the beloved '70s Schoolhouse Rock animated TV shorts, this time with a disheveled narrator (suspiciously similar to recently apprehended anti-corporate terrorist Ted Kaczynski) explicitly explaining the insidious connection between a few mega-corporations (including General Electric, then owners of SNL network NBC) and everything from media manipulation and FCC deregulation to corporate welfare and the then-erupting PCB scandal, in which political and corporate influence was shown to be behind cancer-causing pollution.
Read More: When 'Conspiracy Theory Rock' Was Banned From 'SNL' | https://ultimateclassicrock.com/conspiracy-theory-rock-snl/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Read More: When 'Conspiracy Theory Rock' Was Banned From 'SNL' | https://ultimateclassicrock.com/conspiracy-theory-rock-snl/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral