This week’s “Saturday Night Live” took aim at Ebola, featuring New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie and aid worker Kaci Hickox’s vocal feud over her mandatory quarantine. It ended with a slap fight.
In the sketch, “Christie,” talking to a parody version of Fox News host Megyn Kelly, said that Hickox’s forced quarantine couldn’t possibly be “inhumane” as the nurse called it because she had a tent in a parking lot and a portable toilet.
“In New Jersey we call that a luxury condo,” “Christie,” played by Bobby Moynihan said, and “some of the best takeout food in Newark,” including the “Calzone Emporium down on Route 35!”
Christie quarantined Hickox in Newark, New Jersey when she returned from a month working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. After four days in an isolation tent and ample criticism that the quarantine was medically unnecessary, or as the Centers for Disease Control called it, “draconian,” she was allowed to be transferred to her home in Maine.
“My only job is to protect the people of New Jersey and believe me they need protection,” he said, sounding an awful lot like the real-life governor, before veering off into classic “SNL” territory. “Their immune systems are already under attack by tattoo infections, tainted well vodka, and jet fumes, and by that I mean the stench of the New York Jets.”
The segment later shifts to Hickox in Maine, where’s she introduces herself as “Kaci with an “I” as in, I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike! Yeah!”
Real-life Hickox was asked by Maine upon her transfer to submit to a voluntary in-home quarantine, something she refused and defied with a morning bike ride with her boyfriend. The governor vowed legal action to keep her in her home, but Hickox was later freed of that quarantine by a Maine judge late Thursday, giving her some restrictions like staying within her town.
Asked how she’s been spending her time since the quarantine order was lifted, “Hickox” says she’s been volunteering in kissing booths and handing out Halloween candy with her bare hands. Ebola can only be transmitted by direct contact to the bodily fluids of a symptomatic person, like through a kiss.
She’s then confronted by none other than “Christie,” who answers her query on how he was able to appear in Maine so quickly by saying “I’m Chris Christie, I’m everywhere!”
“I can’t wait to sue you,” she fires back.
“Yeah, well, get in line! It starts all the way back at the G. W. Bridge and the traffic is slow!” he said, before the pair engage in a hand-flailing, slap fight.
Jane Timm