Last month, Donald Trump was invited to host "Saturday Night Live," and with his appearance came an outpouring of criticism against NBC for allowing a man with such a history of racism and sexism to host the show. Bob Chipman, a popular media critic, said: “Trump on [Saturday Night Live] will very likely be something that everyone involved… ends up apologizing for later on, as in, pick a current cast member, [their] ‘SNL story’ forevermore includes an ‘Oh God, Trump... yeah. Well, it was a different time.’”
Allowing Trump to host "Saturday Night Live" has put the show on the wrong side of history, and though it will easily move past it, it’s something that will remain part of its legacy forever.
Two weeks ago, the Voices of Lee performed at a Donald Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama. Not long after, Danny Murray, the group’s director, posted a selfie he took with Mr. Trump, which was shared by our district representative, Kevin Brooks, and the backlash poured out. There were a good number of students disappointed that Lee would allow itself to be associated with “the least Christ-like candidate,” and Kevin Brooks soon deleted his tweet, though it remained on the Voices of Lee’s Twitter account. The majority of the backlash was nothing more than disappointment, however, and it died down after a couple of days.
I’m legitimately disappointed in how insignificant the backlash was. Donald Trump is the embodiment of the worst our country has to offer: he is racist, having called all Mexicans crossing the border rapists (which is untrue) and claimed that black people commit the majority of all crime (which also is untrue); sexist, having accused a debate moderator of menstruating because he didn’t like the questions she asked him; and arrogant, claiming to be the Hemingway of Twitter (his tweets usually are barely coherent). In performing at his rally, we have made the statement that his views are acceptable at our school, and that those who hold views like him, so long as they’re popular enough, can invite us over to sing a few songs without any worries. The most major consequence of this was that our district’s representative had to delete a tweet, and that is no consequence at all.
Of course, I’m not disappointed in our school’s administration for allowing the Voices of Lee to perform at Trump’s rally in the first place. Not disappointed at all.
I’m f*cking livid.
If asked about this, I’m sure the administration (by which I mean President Conn) will say something along the lines of “performing with him doesn’t mean we endorse him” and “we performed for Obama and you didn’t complain about that, but you’re complaining about this, which makes you hypocritical.”
The problem, though, is that performing at a Trump rally does at the very least implicitly endorse him, and our school’s endorsement of such a problematic figure is something we should genuinely question. When we performed for Obama at his inauguration, we implicitly endorsed him as well, but in that we were endorsing a man who promised change through hope and love, with the small caveat of also endorsing some policies that Lee doesn’t officially support. Trump, however, promises no such hope and love, as he runs his campaign using fear tactics and hate-filled rhetoric. There is no reason that a school whose purpose is to share the hope and love of the gospel should be even slightly associated with such a man as Trump, and our decision to perform at one of his rallies will remain a tarnish on our school’s legacy.
