By now you are probably aware that Tina Fey showed up to play Sarah Palin on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. (You likely discovered this by reading that great newspaper, The Picayune-San Francisco Unsurprising News Digest Of The World.) And if you haven’t seen it yet, no doubt there is video of it somewhere for you to watch, and you will see Fey and Poehler just fucking ramming their knives into Palin’s back, portraying her as a brainless ditz with no business running for vice-president.
This is good news. It is not good news because they made fun of Sarah Palin. Lots of people can make fun of Sarah Palin, because it is so goddamned easy to make fun of her (without having to resort to sexist arguments like “can she do the job with five kids,” which would never be asked of a man). She is the political equivalent of a pinata. So that’s not why it’s good news.
It’s good news because SNL is the heart and soul of conventional wisdom. (It wasn’t always, but has been for well long enough now.) It survives almost entirely on predictability and repetition, and on safe, non-edgy comedy above all. If SNL has, as an entity, decided that Sarah Palin = Dan Quayle 2.0, that means that this is the narrative that pop culture as a whole has deemed appropriate for Palin, and that narrative will siwftly and surely take root throughout both pop culture and then the traditional news media, who love nothing better than a pre-delivered story so they don’t have to waste time with original thought or actual reporting.
And with that narrative, Sarah Palin steadily goes back to being what she always was: a motivator for her own political base and little more. Furthermore, it has the potential to shift the race away from Palin vs. Obama (which is where it is right now) back to McCain vs. Obama. That’s a fight the Republicans desperately do not want to have, because they’ve spent the past month campaigning so dirty that McCain’s “honorable soldier” shtick lies in tatters, even in the media.
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I hope you’re right, because I really can’t stand another 2004. As it is, checking 538 and EV makes me want to open my wrists.
The problem is.. do enough people still watch this overrated show for it to have the desired effect?
Yeah, I’ve seen some of the stuff the McCain campaign’s been running about Obama, and if the attention Palin’s been getting shifts back towards McCain’s attack campaign, they may as well throw in the towel — for all of Obama’s faults, he still seems like the lesser of two evils at this point.
But then again, I know jack shit about politics, so who knows?
You forgot the most important reason this is important, though.
It means Tina Fey got a big paycheck. That’s always good.
The Palin/Quayle comparisons just make me nervous. Yes, Quayle is the go-to name when referring to terrible VP candidates, but his ticket still won! I don’t want Palin to be Quayle 2.0!
I can see Russia from my house!
I’m just hoping that the young voters turn out in droves this election.
Please, please let this be so. Not as an American, but as a citizen of the world this past days made me loose every ounce of hope in humanity i had left… I need the world to wake up and start bashing this woman out of the spotlight and back into crazy-lying-extremist-religious-nutbag land or, you know, Texas or something
It always seemed to me that the people who matter in this election would consider SNL too liberal anyway. Scarily enough MGK, media outlets may know the deal on Palin but the average voter? All I’ve seen they know is that she’s a woman, “hot”, and her daughter got knocked up (which they don’t blame on Palin). Both Palin and McCain could be photographed feasting on orphans, it doesn’ t matter. This election is the biggest fight Conservatives have ever had to face and they don’t care who the candidate is, it’s all about beating the “Bitch” and the Muslim, uppity N-word.
MGK wasn’t saying that it matters because people watch SNL. Rather, that SNL is indicative of the popular opinion of things, which hopefully means that Palin will, and rightfully so, become a joke outside of Fox News.
Did you see the ladies of The View interview John McCain? THAT was gold.
Stupid NBC and stupid copyright claims. SOME OF US DON’T HAVE TVS!
Pardon me if someone’s said this before, but over the weekend I noticed another historical political figure rose to power through his war imprisonment record.
Unlike McCain, he didn’t crash any planes – he fought well, like a good soldier, and even wrote a book explaining his struggle, along with a system of beliefs he’d formed with a fellow prisoner on how he thought international relations should be handled. This book was also especially fuelled by the fact that he was very angry that his side had lost the war after he’d been imprisoned and fought so hard. The popularity of the book helped propel him, politically, until he became the leader of his country and led them on to a succession of even more horrible, bloody wars.
That soldier’s name? A. Schickelgruber. Look it up.
The clip’s on Hulu, though I’m not sure what kind of region lockouts they do.
Quite amusing. And, yeah, I hope this does indicate a change in the narrative, but I’m not holding out hope for anything that makes it easy. This election cycle seems determined to stress me out.
My favorite part is where Seth Meyers announced that the polls placed McCain 6 points behind Sarah Palin
My favorite part is on ABC World News Sunday, where they said (while playing the clip) that it was actually Palin on SNL. Fey’s impression was THAT GOOD. (And our news media that bad.)
Stupid NBC and stupid copyright claims. SOME OF US DON’T HAVE TVS!
Keep looking, Charlotte. The first YouTube clip I found and clicked on didn’t work, but it only took me a few minutes to find a clip posted by somebody else that NBC hadn’t gotten to yet. It’s worth the search! 😀
That’s a fight the Republicans desperately do not want to have, because they’ve spent the past month campaigning so dirty that McCain’s “honorable soldier” shtick lies in tatters, even in the media.
I’ve said the following before, but not here.
We know McCain said he’d rather lose an election than lose a war.
If the man really had any honour he would have also said “I’d rather lose an election in which I fought fair, than win it by using the same kinds of despicable tactics that were used against me in 2000.”
That soldier’s name? A. Schickelgruber. Look it up.
There appears to be some question as to whether that was really Hitler’s original name, but it does go to show that being a POW does not necessarily mean somebody should be in power.
That being said, bad as McCain is I don’t think it’s fair to compare him to Hitler. John McCain has a long way to go before he becomes as bad as Hitler, although if he were to attack Iran it would bring him a lot closer.
The clip’s up on the NBC’s SNL website.
That was the most amusing thing I’ve seen SNL do in a long time.
Now I have to watch this. Tina Fey is always funny.
My mother is considering renting a giant bus/van thing and putting an “Obamamobile” poster on it to shuttle people to voting stations this November, considering there will be a lot of broke young people who can’t afford gas. This would be an awesome idea if I didn’t live in Florida.
The Tina Fey As Supersarah cameo does something else other than define the Conventional Wisdom on Palin (overhyped MILF). It proves that just in case, if McCain/Palin wins and then McCain dies in office, we can pull an Iron Mask scenario, kidnap Palin, replace her with Fey, and win the war on sanity. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Was Fey wearing a faux “turkey neck” in that video?