I couldn't agree more with Don Flood's assertion that it's time for Saturday Night Live to retire Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump character ("A joke that's no longer funny," March 28).
To keep us laughing is the business of the entertainment industry, and President Trump has provided an unending stream of fodder for late-night comedy writers. But in retrospect, it has become clear that the troubling things Mr. Trump says and does, when refashioned as late night entertainment, has worked in his favor because it tends to make us take his provocations less seriously, easier to dismiss.
We may gasp when one of his absurd utterances is reported on the evening news, but our sense of outrage is diluted by the time Alec Baldwin gets through with him. As Mr. Flood observed, Mr. Trump knows this and benefits from it. The question is whether we know it.
Howard Bluth, Baltimore