'SNL' Wraps Up With McCartney and Ferrell

Plus our usual cartoons and more.

May 17, 2026

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.

“SNL” finale last night. Will Ferrell as ghost of Epstein.

Weekend Update:

Ferrell monologue with McCartney pop-up.

Meanwhile, a future without Colbert. Mediaite:

Comic Byron Allen said his program that will soon be replacing Late Show host Stephen Colbert will have nothing to do with politics. Instead, he told CNN on Saturday that his goal is simple: “just be funny.”
Allen talked about his approach to late night during an interview on Michael Smerconish’s show. And he made it clear, he’s going in a much different direction than Colbert, who has been locked in a years-long feud with President Donald Trump and routinely bashes the president on his show.

But hey, tough luck for the Trump Ballroom. as the Senate Parliamentarian just ruled the $1 billion project will now require 60 votes for approval.

And CNN’s @KFILE reveals that the man leading the hantavirus response in the U.S. is a specialist in penile implants—with little public health experience—and hosted a podcast called “Erection Connection.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Today, thousands of Americans, including eighteen members of Congress, traveled to Selma and Mongomery to call Americans to action to protect voting rights. Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow told Joseph D. Bryant of Alabama news site AL, “This moment is bigger than Democrats or Republicans. This is about democracy itself. This is about whether Black communities, poor communities, rural communities, formerly incarcerated people, and marginalized voices will continue to have representation and political power in America.”
Speakers united around the theme that those trying to gerrymander their way into control of Congress in defiance of voters had reawakened a movement. “They think they can draw us out of power,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told an audience in Montgomery.
“They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened. Because it is not a coincidence, and our whole country must understand, that it was not until voting rights were ratified in this country that we got the Great Society. Because when Black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voted rights are protected, healthcare gets expanded. When voted rights are protected, our country moves forward. And Montgomery, that’s what they’re actually afraid of. They’re afraid of us coming together. They’re afraid of us protecting one another.”