Michael Che’s eyebrow-raising attempt to score comedic points about Simone Biles’ difficult decision to withdraw from Olympic events aired on NBC might be more surprising if this hadn’t been his longstanding pattern. It points to his tendency to attempt to gin up controversy for a degree of attention even beyond the level a “SNL” star usually receives.

Che, the co-head writer of the show and co-anchor of its “Weekend Update” segment, added a series of since-deleted posts to his Instagram story on Thursday, beginning with ““man, i wanna make fun of simone biles.” He went on to share...