Will "Britney" Be Back Next Hanukkah?
by Bridget Byrne
Dec 15, 1999, 2:30 PM PT
It won't be one more time for a Britney Spears-Hanukkah sketch on Saturday Night Live. Or will it?
Today's Daily Variety says NBC has bowed to pressure for the Anti-Defamation League, agreeing to edit from any reruns a segment of SNL's December 4 show in which guest host Christina Ricci, aping teen popster Spears, pronounced that Christians have forgiven Jews for "killing our Lord."
But Variety also quotes SNL producer Lorne Michaels as insisting that, as far as he's concerned, the matter to edit (or not edit) was "still under discussion."
Today, an NBC spokesperson would only say that the Variety report was accurate. (No word on which part was accurate.)
The offending sketch was a poke at Celine Dion's CBS holiday special, And So This Is Christmas. In SNL's skewed comic universe, the special was called And So This Is Hanukkah. The bit featured a faux Spears (Ricci), and a faux Dion (show regular Ana Gasteyer), as well as mock versions of singers Ricky Martin, Tori Amos and Lou Bega ("Mambo No. 5").
As Dion, Gasteyer dared the P.C. police by saying that Jews owned all the movie studios and banks, but it was ingenue actress Ricci as a baby-faced Spears who, in the ADL's eyes, really crossed the line.
In a letter to NBC, ADL national director Abe Foxman charged the skit's gags "represent anti-Semitic stereotypes at their worst and which have been at the root of much suffering in our own century." Foxman called NBC's "lame attempt" at humor "unacceptable."
In the letter, Foxman did acknowledge that it is SNL's mandate to "poke fun at institutions and individuals in society" and that some parts of the Britney-Hanukkah skit fell into that acceptable, "irreverent" category.
According to Variety, NBC executive vice-president Roz Weinman, in a written response to Foxman, pledged that the offending portions of the sketch would be excised from all future broadcasts.
The censor's scissors are nothing new around SNL. Last year, NBC axed a Robert Smigel cartoon that linked network parent company General Electric to assorted conspiracy theories.
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