Nikki Glaser is under fire for her Saturday Night Live monologue.
The professional comedian had the audience — and viewers at home — laughing for nearly ten minutes.
However, touching upon topics like human trafficking and the sexual abuse of children did, understandably, have some people feeling uncomfortable.
Did she shine a light upon important topics? Did she go too far? Is it possible that she did both?
Nikki Glaser hosted ‘Saturday Night Live’ and delivered a lengthy monologue
Saturday Night Live monologues tend to be pretty hit-or-miss.
Some would say that the best monologues come from people who are already comedians.
But Nikki Glaser, her monologue, and SNL are under fire for her jokes on the Saturday, November 8 episode.
To be blunt, she cracked jokes about sex trafficking, pedophilia, and the sexual abuse of children.
These are heavy topics with a lot of real-world parallels. Though this was only a small portion of her 9-minute monologue, it’s getting most of people’s attention.
During her monologue, Glaser referred to New York City as Jeffrey Epstein’s “original island.”
She also joked that she had felt “obsessed with slavery recently.” The context was discussion of nail salon workers.
“You can go to the nail salon with a friend, but you get separated at the border,” she quipped.
“They do not let you sit next to each other. It’s so antisocial.”
Glaser described: “You’re just sitting there watching ‘Beat Bobby Flay’ on mute. You can’t talk to the woman doing your nails because … slavery? I don’t know! She seems stuck and sad.”
That is essentially an edgy version of what’s the deal with airline food. But she didn’t stop there.
After discussing trafficking, her monologue took a personal turn
“Every time you go … to a public women’s restroom and you sit in the stall, there’s always a poster on the back of the stall that’s asking you if you’re being trafficked,” Nikki Glaser described.
“They’re in every stall. They’re in every world language,” she continued. “The English is really tiny and it’s like, ‘You wish.’”
This flavor of joke about sex trafficking feels very 2008.
That was an era when it was more mainstream to joke about horrors while pretending that things like sexual predation was complimentary (often as the punchline).
Glaser acknowledged that men’s restrooms do not tend to have this language.
She joked that men are more likely to see writing that reads: “You have signs that are like, ‘Want a slave? Text Traffick to 69-69.’”
In addition to the sex trafficking bits and discussing notorious criminals Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, she took it to a personal place.
Glaser joked about a time when her 4-year-old nephew had asked to shower with her, with her sister’s approval.
“‘Maybe it’s OK if you come and supervise,’” she recalled, reminding her sister to prioritize the boy’s safety.
“‘What if I molest him?’ She was like, ‘Would you?!’ I was like, ‘Like, no! Never. That’s disgusting!’” Glaser noted. “But that’s what I’d say if I was gonna. [Child abusers] lie. Don’t trust anyone! I don’t even trust myself.”
Glaser then joked: “I don’t wanna go in there! How do you become a pedophile?”
She correctly noted: “You don’t get to choose what you’re into, dude.” For example, she cited her surprising fondness for pickleball.
Sometimes, comedy needs to delve into uncomfortable topics — to shine a light on them (and to elicit laughs)
The subject matter that Nikki Glaser chose for this portion of her monologue is deliberately uncomfortable. As you can imagine, online backlash was pretty intense.
However, others have spoken up to defend her. Some praised her for shining a light on important topics.
She’s right when she says that there are too many people who trust relatives absolutely. The vast majority of child sex abuse cases involve family or family friends, because these are the predators who have access.
The people accusing Glaser of being a secret sexual predator for telling these jokes have thoroughly lost the plot.
In fact, YouTube commenters under the video (normally the worst commenters on the internet) seemed to heap praise upon the stand-up for tackling heavy topics in a way that brought laughs.
Maybe SNL isn’t the best audience to tell edgy humor that wouldn’t have seemed so edgy 15 years ago. But then, if even one person goes “yeah maybe I should be a little less trusting with family” after watching the monologue, that can’t be a bad thing.