Michael Che
Role at the time: Saturday Night Live Weekend Update co-anchor, in a TODAY interview
Response to this claim
Calling women who wear shorts at the gym whores, as Shane Gillis did in his Saturday Night Live monologue, is misogynistic.
“That’s comedy. It’s like, you think it’s funny and then some people don’t”
TODAY.com account of Michael Che's October 15, 2026 interview with TODAY's Laura Jarrett, in which he was asked about the reaction to Gillis's monologue, with his answers quoted in order.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The reference point is Shane Gillis's joke in his October 10, 2026 Saturday Night Live monologue that women at the gym now dress like whores. Che treats the joke as ordinary comedy that some people find funny and others do not, and later says he can't criticize anybody for swinging and missing, so we labeled it Minimized. The closest competing label is Explicitly declined; it loses because Che answered the question and characterized the joke rather than refusing to comment.