I've honestly never watched the Al Smith charity dinner before but felt compelled to watch it Thursday night after learning that Kamala Harris was too afraid to attend and would instead be speaking via prerecorded video.
But if you were expecting Kamala to be on camera making a few jokes, that's not what happened. The video began with a rather serious introduction.
“Your eminence and distinguished guests, the Al Smith dinner provides a rare opportunity to set aside partisanship,” she began before being interrupted by actress Molly Shannon, who was playing her old Saturday Night Live character, the socially awkward Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher.
The Mary Katherine Gallagher character was running around in the background before "distracting" Kamala.
“Hey, what's going on? Who was that?” Kamala asked, her acting skills a hard zero.
“Oh, sorry. Mary Katherine Gallagher,” Shannon said nervously and excitedly. “Mary Katherine Elliott. It's nice to meet you.”
Kamala, still deadpanning, replied. “Very nice to meet you, Mary Katherine. Right now, I’m trying to record my speech for tonight’s dinner.”
“I just wanna say that I’m a Catholic, and tonight is one of the biggest dinners next to the Last Supper.”
Things only grew more awkward when Shannon’s character blurted out her trademark phrase, “Sometimes when I get nervous, I stick my fingers under my arms, and I smell them like that.”
If that line was funny in the 1990s, it’s not funny anymore because people old enough to remember the skit have heard it plenty of times before.
“So tell me something. I’m giving a speech,” Kamala continued, again, without any acting skills. “Do you have some thoughts about what I might say tonight?”
The Mary Katherine character responded with a nonsensical monologue about needing a woman to represent the country, only to reveal the lines came from the series "House of Dragons," leaving Kamala and likely the audience puzzled.
As the dialogue limped along, Harris tried for a laugh by linking election fraud to the Ten Commandments after Mary Katherine said, “Thou shall not bear false witness to thy neighbor.”
Kamala replied, “Indeed, especially thy neighbor’s election results.”
I guess that was supposed to be funny?
It didn't get any better, but the whole skit was only a few minutes. But as you can see from the video, the audience was definitely unamused by it.
NEW: Kamala Harris releases her pre-recorded video for the Al Smith dinner in New York that she didn't show up for.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 18, 2024
Comedian Jim Gaffigan made fun of the Vice President after the crowd gave a dismal applause once it ended.
Cringe. pic.twitter.com/9dvsYQub9h
According to Wikipedia, Shannon portrayed the character on SNL from 1995 to 2001. It wasn’t particularly funny back then, and it’s baffling that Kamala’s campaign thought it would be funny now, 23 years after the character’s heyday.
The official reason for Kamala Harris’s absence from the event was chalked up to a scheduling conflict, but after watching the footage, the real reason seems clear: Kamala Harris simply can’t pull off humor. Sure, she can read from a teleprompter, but delivering a joke that actually lands is a whole different skill set.
That’s not necessarily a knock against her—comedy is all about timing and delivery. Even Jim Gaffigan, a seasoned comedian, struggled to make several jokes hit during the dinner, sometimes because the jokes were bad but also because some were poorly delivered. While some praised his performance as the emcee, it was far from his best. Gaffigan thrives with his own material, and it felt like he was seeing these jokes for the first time as he read them off the teleprompter.
I suspect Kamala's handlers tried a speech that incorporated humor, but it didn't work, so she delivered a short and boilerplate speech, leaving the comedy part to Molly Shannon, which didn't work either.
"I don't even know what that noise you're making is," Gaffigan quipped to the audience after the video ended. "As I watched that, I couldn't help but think, 'Now I know how my kids felt when I FaceTime'd into a piano recital they were at.'"
Trump, on the other hand, absolutely crushed it last night.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member