That sketch is not funny. I didn't think the earlier other ones were either (they just weren't written well! You can write a funnier skit where the theme is media bias!), though I understand why they were cathartic for Hillary supporters.  SNL is both unfunny and out of touch with current politics (which makes satire difficult). They don't seem to understand what is worthy of mockery...

No Noam, not subtle at all. I am not sure but what this is just an over - the - top skit on the unlikable Hillary. It is pile on time. Maybe more Schadenfreude than Obama suck up.

What was unusually pleasing about the sketch was that it was an actual attempt at pardoy - instead of the lame immitations of actual debates that SNL typically relies upon.

(That's what makes Colbert and Stewart so sharp by comparison.  They do actual satire.  SNL, on the other hand has been reduced to silly caricature and cheap impressions).

But complaining about "unfair" treatment in comedy sketches such as these is an even sillier exercise.  After all, if you play it that way, then Obama has an equally valid complaint.  The sketch actually suggested that the Democratic race is "hoplessly deadlocked."  And that's only true in Hillaryland.    

SNL has had a conservative writer and many conservative leaning performers (esp Darrell Hammond) for most of the 2000's.  Since categorically conservatives aren't funny (strong statement but I stand by it) the jokes on the show have not been funny.  This effect has been combined with the several year free pass the show gave the Bush administration after  9/11.  It'll take some time for the show to come back if ever.

Why can't people just take this stuff as a caricature of perceptions rather than reality, because, you know, that's what it is?  It gave me a good chuckle or two.  What's the problem with that?  I think it's getting a little silly when we're interpreting SNL's political commentary in any kind of serious way.

Ligedogl: Conservatives aren't funny? Are you mad? What about the late William F. Buckley, Jr.? P.J. O'Rourke? Especially Christopher Buckley?

I wonder if it's just hard to mock Obama because he connects so well with young people and seems to "get it" in the sense that he understands that politics is largely a bunch of BS. It's hard to mock someone who is already in on the joke.

I'm with the ghostly citizen: This was almost funny, in that it was at least an attempt at satire, rather than the make-jokes-while-doing-an-impression norm of SNL. However, for this to have actually been funny, they needed the actor playing Hillary either to do a passably good Hillary impression, or not to attempt a Hillary impression at all. Either approach works, but the middle ground of doing a crap impression does not. Hillary's speaking style is very distinct and easy to imitate -- she's effectively a female William Shatner in terms of pause and emphasis, but with the added twist of drawing out the words before and after the Shatner pronoun pause rather than coming to a full stop. So instead of Shatner's, "Now, I ... KNOW that my ... OPPONENT," Hillary would say, "Now, IIIIIIIII knooooooooow that myyyyyyy uh-POHN-ent." Really a very easy verbal style to imitate. The actor here was much closer to Al Gore than to Hillary, which ruined any chance this skit ever had.

But thanks, Noam, for the timely reminder that I'm still not missing anything by not watching SNL.

SNL = Still Not Laughing.  Honestly, when I was in junior high -- too young to go out on a Saturday night but old enough to watch and enjoy infantile humor -- and Steve Martin was a wild and crazy guy, the shtick was funny.  Ever since then, not so much.

PJ O'Rourke was pretty funny for about thirty minutes back in the mid-1980s. Since then he's only been obnoxious and/or repetitive. The Buckleys, OK. But as you note, one of 'em is dead.

SNL used to do great political stuff. It was funny and sharp and it didn't rely solely on an impression or a catch phrase.

- Ackroyd as Nixon (those sketches were sublime), and to a lesser extent, Carter

- Phil Hartman as Clinton stopping his morning jog to go in to McDonald's ("There's going to be a lot of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton")

- Hartman as Reagan, playing the amiable dolt in public and privately masterminding Iran-Contra and losing patience with his less intelligent advisers

- Dukakis-Bush debate - "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy." (although this is where they really started relying on impressions and catch phrases - I blame Dana Carvey)

- Will Ferrell as Bush was hit or miss, but sometimes hilarious. There was one sketch with the 2000 GOP candidates in a New Hampshire restaurant, and McCain mentions that he was a POW. Bush: "Oh really, were you in Vietnam? I HADN'T HEARD."

(Yeah, I've watched a lot of SNL in my days.)

I haven't seen a single sketch about Obama-Clinton that has been even remotely funny. It wouldn't have been hilarious, but this particular sketch could have been mildly amusing if they'd had Hillary spouting her usual nonsense and put these jokes in subtitles underneath her. That at least would have been a little less on-the-nose.

Why use a stiletto when a Broadsword backed up by a twelve-gauge shot gun and a 150 mm Howitzer would do?  I don't mind broad humour if it is really over the top, but this?  Haven't watched SNL for well over ten years, and not tempted to do so either.

Rhubs: Hillary's "You know" has got to go down in the history of rhetoric as the most grating two words ever uttered since W's "those folks".  I actually find Obama's delivery to be clipped - the reading is not always right, and his emPHAsis appears to be on the wrong part of the sentence - but much better compared to Hillary.

ligedog1 -- Who are the conservatives you refer to besides Hammond?  Anyway, this sketch wasn't conservative, it was anti-Hillary/pro-Obama.

Incidentally, I can't believe you Obamabots are not reflexively jumping on the band-wagon and patting your collective Kool-Aid drinking backs for this hatchet job on the Great White Mother.    Where is your "petty partisanship" and cheap shots?  Disappointing, to say the least.

icarusr, all of the remaining candidates have some unusual verbal tics. I just find Hillary's to be both the easiest to imitate (she really does follow the Shatner rules of line delivery, with slight variations) and also the most annoying. The irony is that, when she's not using her speaking-in-public voice, Hillary has an attractive voice and a very gentle, inviting manner of speaking. How somebody married to a master speaker like Bill could wind up developing such an offputting verbal style is beyond me. If Bill can't help Hillary develop a non-annoying public speaking style, what the hell good is he for her? If she would just talk to the public like she speaks one-on-one, she would probably have won the nomination. Instead, she sounds like she's a bad actor auditioning for the role of Evita in a community-theater production. "Don't cryyyyyyy for meeeee, ar-jen-TEEN-uh."

I'll take the smokey professor or the wheezy geezer any day of the week over that.

"If she would just talk to the public like she speaks one-on-one, she would probably have won the nomination."

Nah - but if she had paid attention to the caucus states ("Only 12%, pshaw") she would have won the nomination.  Or if she had paid attention to the post Super Tuesday races.  Or if she hadn't run on experience she does not have.  That is, if she'd been a different person ...

I was relieved someone finally came through with "Obamabots" and "Kool-Aid", I thought for a second the usual lively political discourse was dead.  "Kool-Aid drinking backs" could've used some work as a formulation, but it'll have to do. Don't bother responding, I know: I'm an elitist.

icarusr said:

"Incidentally, I can't believe you Obamabots are not reflexively jumping on the band-wagon and patting your collective Kool-Aid drinking backs for this hatchet job on the Great White Mother.    Where is your "petty partisanship" and cheap shots?  Disappointing, to say the least."

Now THAT is funny!

jhildner said:

"ligedog1 -- Who are the conservatives you refer to besides Hammond?  Anyway, this sketch wasn't conservative, it was anti-Hillary/pro-Obama."

It may not have been conservative, but it had all the appeal of a GOP debate. :D

I think one of the benefits of Hillary losing the nomination to Obama will be that we won't be subjected to much more of Amy Poehler trying to do Hillary.  What a sad, inept effort, as Rhubarbs so aptly explains.  They don't even get the makeup right.  Just terrible, all the way around.

Woody, I agree with most of your list, although my all-time favorite was Dan Aykroyd doing Bob Dole ("You know, I know it, the American people know it"), all the while tightly clutching the pen in his left hand.  I also thought Will Ferrell as Bush was masterful.  Unlike some other performers who attempted to do Bus as a rather amiable simpleton, Ferrell got it that Bush was not only a knucklehead, but a mean one, sort of like the dimwitted schoolyard bully.

Darrell Hammond doing Al Gore was also pretty good, although there isn't much you can do with Gore other than be plodding and monotonous, which wears thin rather quickly.      

I saw that put-down of Hillary and I was shocked at how roughly they treated her.  But I think there was some truth behind the charges.  In fact, I would say that skit captured what I really think about Hillary now, after the six weeks or so prior to the vote in Indiana.  She really hurt herself, and that skit nailed it.

Neil

Sketch Ideas:

Meet "Black Obama"!  When Obama gets home after a long day of hope-mongering, nuance-mongering, and hopeful-nuanced-Wright-distancing, he lets go his public persona and starts to talk and act like an absurdly over-the-top racial stereotype, thus sending up racist fears surrounding Obama and the media's focus on race in the campaign.  ("Arugula," it turns out, is what the Senator calls his weed.)  Keenan Thompson to star.

A bit late for this Hillary bit, but her doing shots in a bar had potential.  She gets shitfaced while on the campaign trail pandering to regular folks and launches into a drunken diatribe about how the voters are mean and stupid.  Much truth-telling ensues -- accurate impression not required.

Here's what Aaron Sorkin's fictional variety show would have done with McCain:  "No We Can't!" -- i.e., a policy critique.  Only in Sorkin's mind does that kind of thing work.  Here's what early SNL would have done:  "McCain is comically old and cranky."  McCain will evolve, but let's start with old and cranky.  Not really a sketch idea, I guess, but I'm not a writer.

I would love to see a debate between Old McCain and Black Obama.  Good for the country?  No.  Good for television?  Yes.

When conservatives are funny, it usually comes on the form of dry humor or wit (see "Churchill, Winston").

Liberals can be dry and witty too (see "Coward, Noel").  But they're also better at broad satire and farce, something for which today's conservatives seem to have no particular talent, probably because they have been caught up for so long in the kind of humorless moralism that too easily descends into hypocrisy (see "Vitter, David") and is itself the source of humor at their expense.  That this need not be so is demonstrated by Mike Huckabee who, for all his Baptist piety, shows a healthy ability to laugh at human foibles and appetites.