Politicians and Saturday Night Live have an incredible amount in common. Much like your typical senator, SNL is long past its prime, surviving more on reputation than actual accomplishments. And just like a weekly TV show with long, erectile dysfunction ad-riddled commercial breaks, ugly corporate interests often prop up elected officials. But more than anything, the great link between the two is their ability to take something noteworthy and drive it into the ground like John Henry to a railroad spike.
For the presidential candidates, this repetition can be found in negative advertising. Apparently, John McCain voted with George Bush quite a few times. Thank you, Barack Obama. That was quite the revelation, oh, last year. But for SNL, this defining characteristic can be found in every remotely funny sketch they’ve ever produced — and a number of Will Ferrell-related unfunny ones. Of recent note is Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin, which drew an incredible amount of publicity despite no one watching the show anymore. This sudden surge in popularity prompted SNL writers to pen a second, also funny Sarah Palin sketch the very next week. And again the next week. And then the following Thursday. And Saturday. The act quickly grew so tiresome that there was only one way to further ruin it, and that was the route they chose.
They put Sarah Palin on SNL. They did the one thing every knowledgeable Republican in this country fears; they gave a conversationally-challenged, gun-slinging, soon-to-be 44-year-old grandmother/vice presidential candidate poorly scripted airtime on live TV. Forget that the last funny Republican was Chevy Chase’s classic slapstick Gerald Ford routine: There was no way putting Sarah Palin on this show could help her stock. Yet Saturday night came and went, and the four horsemen were nowhere to be found. Sarah Palin and the Republican Party avoided potential disaster by letting the VP candidate do what she’s always done: nothing.
She was totally unnecessary to the broadcast. In two skits, she made zero jokes, contributing nothing to the show beyond her presence, which, at this point, doesn’t pull her too far. It was the epitome of a Republican attempt at humor. Sit and gnash the teeth while surrounded by those liberal entertainment types, then leave and talk about how much fun you had. But suddenly, every right-winger in the United States was a huge Saturday Night Live fan, because Sarah Palin stuck it to the left’s brand of humor by passively appearing on screen.
But back to Republicans, Saturday Night Live and the gift of driving talking points off a cliff. There is a tightly-contested senate race in Minnesota between the incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and the new Democratic candidate Al Franken. Like Sarah Palin, Franken appeared on SNL. Unlike her, he actually contributed to the show, writing many of the show’s political pieces and contributing characters like Stuart Smalley. According to the GOP, Sarah Palin is fit to potentially hold the highest office in the nation, and little stunts like this only aid the claim. But this same party is lambasting voters on how unfit Franken is for a senate seat because of these very associations. This is a point Coleman has run with since Franken candidacy grumblings started several years ago, and yet the very program that makes his opponent a joke should allow the American people to take a possible vice president seriously.
It’s hard to tell if this is a consistency flaw yet, but it’s hard to imagine a Republican senator coming out in criticism of his party’s VP pick two weeks before an election. If it is, Norm Coleman is, like most politicians, a hypocrite. And although hypocrisy in Washington is about as shocking as an Andy Dick arrest, the people of Minnesota can do something about it. They can vote. Just like we all can vote to put the right people into office. Republicans love to criticize the liberal media and the New York Times yet have no problem going to Ground Zero for photo ops or appearing on TV shows when it serves their interests. And just as a friendly reminder, because it can get confusing, Saturday Night Live is on NBC, not C-SPAN.
Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.
