RSSObama’s Honeymoon Interruptus
Gene Lalor | November 23, 2009
After 34 years on NBC, the people at “Saturday Night Live” 
have come to believe their political skits carry a significant amount of weight. And they’re absolutely correct.
Whether it should be so or not, whether comedians should have the power to mold and sway political opinion, SNL has had millions of faithful viewers since 1974 who take its jokes very seriously.
Presidents Nixon and Ford took their satiric lumps before they left the stage and President Carter can attest to the fact that being skewered on SNL can be politically painful. That was during the early days, the time when the show’s “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” were, usually, more funny than caustic.
Presidents Reagan and Bush I also weren’t manhandled too badly and Bill “Teflon-Man” Clinton was virtually impervious.
See here for brief clips of those presidents being SNL-ed: http://bit.ly/4lRYvp
The gloves were off during GWB’s 8 years and he was regularly pilloried and abused on “SNL,” though not suffering any great harm since he was so regularly pilloried and abused by the mainstream media that it didn’t make much difference.
Barack Obama is a whole other story. (I’d say a horse of a different color but that could be misinterpreted.) Candidate Obama fit perfectly with “SNL’s” demographic–young, liberal, and impertinent, and he wasn’t very caricature-able.
That was then, this is now.
The first now moment struck in October when the show took its first real, satiric shot at the young, liberal, and impertinent president with its “do nothing” skit in which Fred Armison’s Obama admits he’d accomplished jacksquat: ”When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I’ve done so far–and that is nothing.”
See the October sketch here: http://bit.ly/VDK3P
That was only the first of the SNL shots across the White House portico and the 4 minute piece hit home with its truth.
It was so effective that CNN launched a fact check and warned that Obama’s honeymoon was over.
CNN cited one pundit as saying that, “SNL mocked previous presidents’ personal characteristics, such as Clinton’s outsized appetites or George W. Bush’s struggles with spoken English. With Obama . . . the show went after his record. In some ways, he’s vulnerable to more serious damage:” http://bit.ly/VDK3P
Some of that more serious damage happened last Saturday with SNL’s funny if crude parody of an Obama-Chinese President Hu Jintao news conference.
It begins with Obama lecturing President Hu who, through a translator, criticizes Obama’s fiscal policies and the costs of Obamacare, questions how spending more money saves money, and asks when China can expect re-payment of the $800 billion we owe them.
Obama’s lame promise that “You will get your money” evokes Hu’s ridicule who then repeatedly offers . . . well, view the skit here: http://bit.ly/7EdCOm
Of course, SNL later manages to include an attack on Sarah Palin, suggesting her presidency in 2012 will precipitate the cataclysms of the movie, 2012.
That was to be expected but SNL’s second lampooning of Barack in 6 weeks must be causing hissy fits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It’s one thing when known enemies attack. It’s quite another when birds of a feather like the SNL crew start acting like Alfred Hitchcock’s birds.
Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/
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