Her opening comment to “Weekend Update” anchor Michael Che—something like “I’m sitting over here because it’s my best side” —read to to me as “this whole schtick will be one long performance of the tunnel-visioned well-meaning rational irrationality of whiteness.” Just that one ostensibly throwaway line said “I sound…

As the character is a fiction, we can go back to the characterization as first represented: the author wanted to represent mystical wisdom, ancient and sacred. At the time, the Orientalizing stereotypes meant that if an author was looking for a character to serve the role of “ancient wisdom,” the stereotype of the…