“She came out of nowhere for us and it and it felt like a cavalry.”

January 9, 2019 9:14 AM

When Kate McKinnon Spoofed New York City’s War on Cars. Before Saturday Night Live, the comic starred in a series of shorts for Streetfilms.org as an angry SUV lobbyist railing against the pedestrianization of Times Square, helping to cut the legs out from under the opposition.
posted by showbiz_liz (6 comments total)

So I was in New York for the big occupy march. I hadn't intended to come out there for it, but I was there and when your friends say "this is the big march, meet us at Washington Square," well, you do that. And it was fine. It. Was a slog. We were YELLING ABOUT THINGS, but they were, and remain, things to be yelled about. I don't think the march made the capitalists watching us from above change their minds, but it almost certainly connected people who are doing excellent work today.

And then we got to Times Square. It was a disaster. Utterly packed.You literally could not move. A woman who had clearly not signed up for this any more than I had kept screaming "I'M FROM WISCONSIN!" And yeah, tough shit for her. She's fine now or Steve Doocey would have told you about her. But it remains that it was a horrific press of people.

So I did the thing New Yorkers scream about and jumped on some scaffolding like a gibbon and got away. I walked three blocks and it's like I was never there.

The moral of this story is: Times Square is basically the worst place to exist.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:08 AM on January 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

I've 💖ed Kate McKinnon for a while, but this is extraordinary even for her--she's like Michele Bachmann when the human mask starts to slip.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:28 AM on January 9, 2019

"YOU'RE COMPLICIT IN YOUR OWN OPPRESSION" — this is good.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:45 AM on January 9, 2019

I think I've heard every Veronica Moss line in the first video out of the mouths of real people, if not all at once. It's disturbingly realistic.
posted by asperity at 12:57 PM on January 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

East14thTaco, I read your comment out loud to an immigrant from the Midwest, who said of your moral, "This is true. Also, I don't know how to jump up on scaffolding like that. Maybe I should learn."
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:28 PM on January 9, 2019

If you climb the scaffolding you will get tazed at best. Don't ever do it. I did it that one time in extraordinary circumstances and would never do it again. They will think you are trying to plant a bomb. Don't do it.
posted by East14thTaco at 8:46 AM on January 10, 2019