SNL: Back in the Saddle

“Saturday Night Live” plunged into presidential politics last night, mocking the media as a tool of Senator Barack Obama as the show returned to the air for the first time since Nov. 3.

The show, a casualty of the writers’ strike, had been dark for months as the presidential campaign increasingly dominated the nation’s attention and took several twists and turns.

Rather than recap what it missed, SNL picked right up as if it had never been gone, opening with a send-up of last week’s CNN debate between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

The pre-show hype had been about who would play Mr. Obama. It turned out to be Fred Armisen, a cast member, who mostly scowled and made a few broad gestures.

But the skit focused on the moderator and two panelists, all of whom swooned over Mr. Obama and either ignored or badgered Mrs. Clinton.

“The three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama,” the moderator said, opening the debate.

Tina Fey, the guest host, delivered an impassioned defense of Senator Hillary Clinton and urged Ohio to save her candidacy.

She noted various objections to Mrs. Clinton and then shot down each one with an ardor that, while funny, also seemed sincere. Hey Tina, was that an endorsement?

She said that while Mrs. Clinton was the first woman with a real chance of becoming president, women have come so far as feminists they don’t feel obligated to vote for her just because she is a woman.

Rather, she said, women today feel perfectly free to make whatever choice Oprah tells them to.

Ms. Fey also noted that some people don’t want to vote for Mrs. Clinton because she can’t control her husband and we would end up with co-presidents.

“That would be terrible, having two intelligent, qualified people working together to solve problems,” she said.

She derided the notion that Americans aren’t ready “to watch their president turn into an old lady,” noting that the country watched Ronald Reagan do it.

Finally, she took on those who say they won’t vote for Mrs. Clinton because she’s a “bitch.” “Yeah, she is,” Ms. Fey said. “And so am I,” she said.

“Bitches get things done,” she added, going into a riff about nuns.

She urged Ohio and Texas, which vote March 4, to get on board with Mrs. Clinton and concluded with this: “Bitch is the new black.”

Obama Backlash

American media have started to pick over

his past and ridicule his rhetoric.

Back in 1995 it would have seemed like meeting just another group of left-wing academics in liberal Chicago.

Barack Obama, then about to be an Illinois state senator, was taken to an activists' gathering at the house of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

So far, so innocuous. Except now Obama is running for president and Ayers and Dohrn - both Illinois professors - were once members of the Weather Underground, a radical Sixties group that planted bombs across America.

Thus the long-forgotten meeting resurfaced late last week in a detailed news story on the respected politics website Politico under the blaring headline: 'Obama once visited 60s terrorists.'

For a candidate long used to an overwhelmingly positive press, it was a jarring headline. But with Obama's new status as the Democrats' clear frontrunner, a media backlash is now showing clear signs of gathering pace.

The Politico story was not alone last week. In the New York Times, two influential columnists weighed in with brutal attacks against Obama.

David Brooks called him a 'trophy messiah' and Paul Krugman claimed Obama's campaign was '...dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality'. Meanwhile, in the Boston Globe, Obama supporter Margery Eagan expressed her own doubts about her pick.

'I'm nervous because John McCain says Obama is an "eloquent but empty call for change" and in the wee, wee hours a nagging voice whispers: "Suppose McCain's right,' Eagan wrote.

Nor was it confined to print. On television, ABC's respected Nightline show ran a segment on Obama's often wildly enthusiastic supporters and compared 'Obama-mania' to the Beatlemania of the Sixties.

Anchor Terry Moran asked: 'Is this a political movement or a personality cult?'

On cable channel MSNBC, a hapless Obama backer, Texan state senator Kirk Watson, was harangued by host Chris Matthews to 'name any' of Obama's legislative achievements. When Watson failed, the clip became a huge Youtube hit.

Many observers say that a backlash against Obama was inevitable after 11 straight wins against his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, had sent the former First Lady's campaign into a desperate tailspin.

'We are going to see this backlash. The press has been enthralled by Obama, but I have no doubt that is going to change,' said Professor Jack Lule, a communications expert at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania.

The Clinton camp are hoping that will finally lead to intense media pressure on Obama that could yet unseat him.

'Mr Obama is the frontrunner. There will be increased scrutiny on him and his qualifications to be president,' said top Clinton strategist Howard Ickes.

That scrutiny will lead to more stories like that of Obama's meeting with the former Weather Underground militants. It will also lead to a willingness to pounce on any perceived mistakes from the Obama camp.

Thus last week Obama's wife, Michelle, faced criticism after she appeared less than patriotic at a campaign rally in Wisconsin.

'For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,' she said. The remark was seized on as anti-American by many commentators, forcing the campaign to stare down a rare surge of criticism and clarify the remarks.

The incident served to show how the media landscape is changing for Obama. At another rally, in Dallas, Obama paused to blow his nose and received a round of cheers. That prompted withering headlines, too.

'Even blowing his nose, Obama gets applause,' snickered the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper from Obama's adopted hometown.

tags: obama  ridicule  baba  president  2008  

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