In his piece for The Huffington Post (below)“Live from New York…Vote Hillary ! “, Adam McKay , a former SNL writer , informs us that Jim Downey , a longtime SNL skit writer and Ann Coulter BFF , is one of those writing the political skits on Obama . According to Adam, Downey, is the same person who did a SNL political hit job on Al Gore in 2000. Adam’s insight is invaluable in explaining the dismal comedy but effective politics piped into viewers homes over the last two weeks of SNL.
SNL is an NBC production and NBC is owned by Defense Contractor GE. Former MSNBC /NBC journalist John Hockenberry details in “You Don’t Understand Our Audience” how the GE “Standards Process” works at NBC In the piece , John paints a clear picture of the importance of GE’ influence on what we get to see on NBC/MSNBC broadcast .
At any rate, I and lots of others, have noted that SNL has gone out of its way, of late, to portray Senator Obama in an unflattering manner. A step beyond mere lampoonery, shall we say.
First, there was a skit parodying the Clinton Campaign’s manufactured tales of long suffering Hillary, which enabled the Clinton Campaign to further hype its crocodile tear laden message:
Why you mean media folk picking on poor Hillary and not Obama ?
In addition, to trying to paint a bigger bull’s eye on Obama, those”tales of woe “also allowed Hillary to play the “picked on woman card”.
Following that skit, SNL viewers were treated to, yet another Obama skit, supposedly based on candidate Obama, and featuring actor Fred Armisen. In last week’s skit, Mr. Armisen plays the oratorically gifted and loquacious Mr. Obama – as a monosyllabic simpleton who is seemingly bereft of any substance or clues about anything. The portrayal would be more understandable were we lampooning our current POTUS – but Obama as a monosyllabic is incredulous and inexplicable. The performance was beyond just bad acting and bad writing -but it was those things as well.
Perhaps playing a character like Mr. Obama is simply beyond Fred Armisen range as an actor ,but his portrayal of Mr. Obama , even as lampoon , is among the worst acting jobs I’ve seen- since Robin Givens flashed “goo goo eyes ” at Mike Tyson during a Barbra Waters interview.
How one connects Mr. Obama to the Amos and Andy type dimwit played by Armisen escapes me? The performance was so bad as to be character assassination by lampoon, not unlike the Jim Crow caricatures of Black folk of days gone by.
And to top off the SNL pre-primary ode to Obama, they featured a cartoon sketch, right out of the race-baiting theme that the Clinton Campaign hatched, during the South Carolina Primary. They depicted Obama as having a “special” closeted relationship relationship with Jessie Jackson and AL Sharpton.
The Cartoon , like Bill Clinton’s words in South Carolina and the “Call Me Harold ads run against Harold Ford during his Tennessee US Senate contest , makes clever use of our racial zeitgeist .
Our racial zeitgeist is where we contemporary Americans keep what remains of our hatreds, stereotypes, taboos and our evolving assumptions about social order based on skin color.
If this zeitgeist were a room and we could to peek inside it , we’d see a furious mess : old stuff dying , old stuff metastasizing to new stuff and new stuff being added as trends and conditions change . All of us have some of the zeitgeist in us – but in varying degrees and configurations.
The Cartoon format is a perfect way to politically tap the zeitgeist, because what we take from the cartoon, is based on each person’s racial sensitivity. The carton gives you the added advantage of avoiding the intense backlash Bill Clinton caused in South Carolina when he tried to make similar appeals featured in the cartoon. Like Bart Simpson, cartoon characters get a pass and sometimes cartoonish people do too. It’s just comedy right?
Here is how it works by category of voters
* Not a racist bone in your body and know lots of Black Folk? No problem, to you the toon is just funny or you may think it exploitative and speak out. You are not the target audience for the bait.
* You think Black Folk are from another planet? No problem – the toon is just reinforcement. You are not the target audience for the bait because if you vote -we got yours.
* On the fence with your racial stuff, and still got some of the old stuff you are trying to work through, but you like Obama’s message? Well, that cartoon just might push you back a bit in your progressive thinking and affect your vote. You just are a prime target for some good old political race baiting. It might not work on you but you are a target; it’s not personal it’s a numbers game.
In short, appeals to the racial zeitgeist can have the impact of reinforcing any latent or lingering racial bias in the voting population. We call it called race baiting because it is a trap designed to ensnare those of us with impulses and biases we may or may not even know we have.
As is widely known, Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton are frequently ridiculed by the Rush Limbaugh crowd and others as divisive figures, just to toss a little red meat to their listeners, from time to time. The Limbaugh/Coulter crowd frequently labels Jessie and Al as everything but children of God, and some of the Limbaugh/Coulter contempt has wafted into the nation’s general political discourse. This voicing of contempt has caused the Reverends to be controversial among some voters.
In the cartoon, the Reverends are portrayed as covert advisors to Obama. In addition, the cartoon showed Obama employing extraordinary, and in the eyes of some, demeaning measures to keep these relationships out of the media’s and the public’s view – but the link between advisors and candidate is clearly made, in this animated skit.
Beyond the linkage that was created, the cartoon story line might even suggest to some viewers, that the relationships might call for some non-animated scrutiny. In addition, due to the demeaning stuff, even some Black voters might be negatively impacted.
The dilemma for the Obama campaign is, how does one recover from a “cartoon attack” without looking silly or seeming to take one’s self to seriously? I guess you could launch a cartoon to muddy your opponent similarly, but you’d need a major network and a highly viewed TV program in your corner to have a similar level of impact – not to mention the time to respond.
As I watched the program, I’m thinking, can NBC be this brazen and desperate to go to these lengths? The answer is clearly: yes they can be, and yes they did. It was a political hit job plain and simple.
Included in the hit job is the on air endorsement of HRC by guest host and by former SNL regular Tina Fey. With all this in the tally, and though it would far exceed FEC guidelines in terms of dollar value, perhaps NBC should count the last two weeks of SNL as a Clinton campaign contribution. As Adam McKay, suggest in“Live from New York…Vote Hillary ! “,it looks like they did affect last Tuesday’s Democratic Party Primary, what else they want or will do -we shall see.
“Live from New York…Vote Hillary!“
By Adam McKay
Let’s face it, the Republicans love Hillary Clinton. They quietly in their heart of hearts pine for her to win the democratic nomination. The Republican Governor of Florida is rolling out the red carpet for a second primary which will favor Clinton. Pat Buchanan can’t be quiet about how much he respects Hillary. Even Ann Coulter pal and SNL sketch writer Jim Downey has written several sketches portraying Hillary as picked on by the press. Downey is one of the all time great sketch writers but I know he’s no Hillary fan. Don’t get me wrong, I like Hillary and still think Bill Clinton is one of our great presidents. But it’s weird. Weird like….well, Pat Buchanan praising Hillary Clinton.
Now it’s possible the corporate right wants her to win in order to keep afloat the huge economy of Hillary hate bumper stickers that if my numbers are correct generates over 55 billion dollars in revenue for the south.* They also could be supporting her because after over seven years of the absolute incompetence that is the Bush administration they finally get that corporate welfare and tax breaks for millionaires are not good for the economy. Or maybe they think she’s Hilary Swank.
But more likely, in fact, screw it, for sure, they are backing her the way I root for Nenad Krstic to cover Keven Garnett so the Big Ticket can put up twenty and twenty on him.
And yes, it’s sad that someone as capable as Hillary would be considered fodder for McCain, a “don’t change horses in mid-stream, even when it takes that horse twelve years to cross that stream” kind of guy. Senator McCain just got the thumbs up from Bush. Isn’t an endorsement from W like a job reference from that astronaut chick who lost it and wore diapers? Well, she is an astronaut and Bush is president.
The biggest upside of this whole thing is that SNL has clearly still got clout even in this day of a thousand channels and a billion internet sites. They influenced a primary for F’s sake. That’s big. Now I wrote for the show in the nineties and it’s an incredible place that’s actually as exciting as it seems like it would be. I’ve seen SNL have incredible political influence in a good way (Dennis Miller’s line about Reagan: “It scares me when the finger nearest the button has a string tied around it.”) and a bad way (Portraying Bush and Gore as equally buffoonish in their debates. Bush was an embarrassment and the sketch made people think they were in the same ballpark.). It’s had its left wing writers like Al Franken and it’s right-wing writers like Jim Downey, who also wrote those Bush-Gore debates sketches. Franken is now running for the Senate and Downey is spinning primaries.
There’s no doubt our nation’s comedic TV political coverage between SNL, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report is far better than the straight news. And though that’s a pithy and tired observation, it’s also stone cold, for better or for worse, true.
So put your bumper stickers on your cars Repubs: “Hillary in ’08, Up Until November, and then McCain!” If you drive an Excursion it’ll fit.
*My numbers are not correct-it’s a spoof.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-mckay/live-from-new-yorkvote_b_90164.html?view=print
GE Tries To Bring Hillary Back To Life
Diary Entry by “Hoss” David P.
Make no mistake, when Saturday Night Live does a “sketch” lambasting the media for it’s alleged easy treatment of Obama, it does so to support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, not to get a cheap laugh, which is the usual for SNL. It doesn’t take a detective to understand that SNL is on NBC which is owned by none other than GE or General Electric. Hillary herself appeared on the show right after the opening skit. I suppose to just drive the point home for those laughing so hard they didn’t notice the thinly veiled endorsement. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this, I just want to connect the possible dots. Hillary Clinton shows up on SNL an NBC show. NBC is owned by general Electric. The SNL sketch was an obvious endorsement of Hillary while it ridiculed Barack Obama. Should I infer anything in this?
General Electric is in several businesses under it’s conglomerate status. A little research showed me that the largest sector of GE is involved with Finance. I didn’t know that. GE Finance has global reach. GE is also involved with all the products you see advertised on TV plus considerable Jet Engine, AERO Space, Medical and Health Care technology involvement. They are indeed a defense contractor. But I just scratched the surface. GE is huge, depending on the list you find, GE is either the 1st or 2nd largest company in the world. For the record, GE is rated high as a company to work for by employers and employees. GE has been around over 100 years and they have had their troubles. Some scandals with selling Israel jet parts and several unresolved run ins with the EPA stand out in recent history.
So why should GE endorse Hillary Clinton? Did they? Well, unofficially through their NBC show SNL. I know, Lorne Micheals says he’s an independent producer, but these kind of coincidences will indeed create questions. So what’s my point? My point is there just might be some substantive differences between the candidacies or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton after all. At least as far as General Electric is concerned. Did anyone really believe that Barack Obama was a threat to Finance, Defense and other top dollar Corporations? I didn’t until I sat and watched him be lampooned on the General Electric Network Show, Saturday Night Live.
Suddenly I’m more interested than ever in Barack Obama. And it’s also true that as if on cue from that SNL Skit there have been several other media scrutinies of Barack Obama in the press and TV Media. Kind of a let’s take a second look type of thing. Still, you can’t help but wonder at the connections between all these new developments. It would appear that the Establishment(Clinton et al), unable to put a dent in Barack Obama through debates and the usual political means, has resorted to comedy shows it owns and various Journalists to step in and step on Barack Obama.
I’m writing this Tuesday night, so before long we’ll know if any of this made a difference or if it was as most of Hillary’s poorly run campaign, too little too late. I just looked at Yahoo News and their report was saying that Ohio was too close to call. That means Hillary will not make up any significant delegate ground even if she wins. I suspect Texas will be the same. The only question remaining will be, is Hillary Clinton going to concede the nomination to Barack Obama in the next few days as the DNC and other senior Democrats are hoping she will do if she is indeed still behind in delegates.
I am a simple man of eclectic interests and tastes with no particular academic credentials. I still perceive, think, read and write somewhat. Writing music is a hobby of mine