'Morning Joe' Gets The SNL Treatment & Kate McKinnon Is Brilliant As Mika Brzezinski

This weekend's 'Saturday Night Live' took aim at the American Health Care Act; President Donald Trump -- voiced by Alex Baldwin -- posing via phone as his own mythical PR agent John Miller; and this week's news that 'Morning Joe' hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are engaged. 

The shows's cold open skit featured comedians Kate McKinnon doing a great Brzezinski with Alex Moffat playing Scarborough. The duo got racy and more than once -- much to the horror of regular 'Morning Joe' panelists also in the skit. 

“Well, guys, they did it, ok. The House has passed their health care plan which might take health insurance away from 24 million Americans. Many of them are swing voters in 2018. If morality doesn’t matter to them, I mean, maybe just pure politics should?” announced Scarborough.

“It’s crazy! I’m up it, I’m over it, I’m past it, I’m in the driveway, the car is running,” added McKinnon’s panicky, hilariously spot-on Brzezinski. She then turned to Joe: “This party—your party, the Republican Party—is completely morally bankrupt at this point.”

“Oh, Mika! That’s enough, ok?” he fired back, before turning to her and gazing at her seductively. “You’re being snickety because you know it pushes my buttons.”

“Does it? Push your buttons?” Brzezinski replied, moving closer to Scarborough and caressing his hair.

“It does,” he offered, gazing deeply into her eyes.

Taking up the AHCA amendment that would allow states to waive Obamacare's pre-existing conditions requirement if they meet certain criteria, McKinnon said: "A C-section is a pre-existing condition. And you know what's not a pre-existing condition? Erectile dysfunction," she continued.

"Well, hold on," Moffat said, appearing to get irritated. "Now, here we go, all right, Mika, you're being dramatic," he added. 

The two hosts continued engaging in suggestive behavior throughout the skit — Moffat's Scarborough called McKinnon's Brzezinski "Mika mouse" and repeatedly said, "You're being naughty" — and in front of the show's panelists, who all looked confused and uncomfortable. 

"Willie Geist, what are you seeing here?" Moffat asked, seeking panelists' thoughts on the AHCA. 

"Uh, what am I seeing here? I have no idea, I have so many unanswered questions," said Willie Geist, who was played by SNL regular Mikey Day.

For those of us who watch 'Morning Joe', Kate McKInnon perfectly nailed Mika Brzezinski. Simply stated, I couldn't stop laughing, and I just wonder what the engaged duo will have to say tomorrow. 

Chi-chi Nwanoku's Chineke's All Black Orchestra Soars In Classical Music World

Chi-chi Nwanoku is a double bass player and professor of Historical Double Bass Studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was a founder member and principal bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a position she held for 30 years. The New York Times profiles Nwanoku, whose Chineke! Foundation has formed Europe's first professional all-black orchestra. 

Though Ms. Nwanoku had quickly formed a board of directors and had already selected most of her players — 62 musicians representing 31 different nationalities — she was constantly reminded that it would be hard to promote their first concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Center here in September 2015 or to even set up a website without a name.

Searching for a name for her new orchestra, the answer came to Nwanoku at 4am, causing her to bolt into a sitting position in her bed and shouting 'Chineke!' Simply stated, the word is derived from her father's Nigerian Igbo tribe and it means 'wonderful' or 'wow'. 

Chineke has been a splendid success in Europe and beyond. In May, some members aligned with the Sphinx Organization, Detroit-based and also dedicated to the development of black and Latino classical musicians, will appear with 'Chineke' in the Netherlands.

With musicians of color remaining rare in classical orchestras, Chineke's critical purpose if so inspire young people of color to pursue studies and practices in classical music. Mr. Kanneh-Mason, who last year was the first black person to win the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year award, sums up the passion orchestra members have for Nwanoku's artistic vision. “It has been inspiring to see lots of other young musicians like me,” he said. “I plan to be involved in Chineke until Chineke becomes unnecessary because eventually the aim will be for diversity to be the norm in classical music.”

These Women Playwrights Are Giving Theater A Moral Compass

Playwrights Lynn Nottage, Anna Deavere Smith, and Paula Vogel, photographed at the Cort Theatre, in New York City.Photograph by Mark Schäfer.

“I wanted to write a new play,” explains the playwright at the center of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, “that posed contemporary moral questions, that forced us to face some uncomfortable truths.” Vogel’s inventive portrayal of a 20th-century Yiddish theater troupe struggling with controversial material does just that, as do Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, for which Nottage received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Vanity Fair profiles the trio . three gifted artists delving into oppression and loss, giving complex voices to complex issues from America's Rust Belt to a young black man's police confrontation in Baltimore.