Saturday Night Live: Take The Gloves Off!

I've got sympathy and respect in equal doses for the current cast of Saturday Night Live. Here they are, the only real satirical sketch show on network TV, and stuck spoofing the most historical and touchiest election in the last 30 years.

On the Democratic side, there's Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and criticism of either one, sure as shit, will be called out as misogynist or racist and then followed with debate about which kind of bigotry is more heinous. On the Republican side, there's John McCain, a former prisoner of war, and any criticism of him will surely be called out as disrespectful to his service.

Each election cycle, SNL has a duty to jump in and sway the public opinion just a little through humor. This cast has certainly done that, implicitly supporting Hillary by pointing out that the media is ridiculously enamored by Barack (guilty here) and extraordinarily easy on him during the debates.

To be fair, young Amy Poehler (didja see her in all her hotness on the cover of Vanity Fair?) has indeed portrayed Hillary as the shrill, obnoxiously never-say-die "fighter" that she is. And in the clip above, Will Forte's smug and deadpan Brian Williams and Darrell Hammond's perpetually giddy Tim Russert are right on the mark. Only Fred Armisen's portrayal of Barack is off; in the words of Chris Matthews, Armisen is playing him as a "black Don Knotts."

As acute and accurate as the skits may be, I can't help but notice, through SNL's new political skit gallery, that the whole thing is tame, tame, tame compared to previous election cycles. I present two videos to prove my case:

In Exhibit A, we have a sketch from the 2004 general election campaign. The Democratic nominee John Kerry is chillin' in his hotel room with his wife when former President Bill Clinton stops by to talk about ... getting it on with homeless, trailer trash hurricane victims. It ends with Clinton telling Kerry: "If I can give you one piece of advice from my life in politics, one thing I could change, it is this: ditch the wife."

Um, ouch.

2.) "Joyride with Perot"

Now, I personally credit Dana Carvey with destroying Ross Perot's presidential run. But that's not what's important in this clip. Instead, check out Phil Hartman's version of Perot's running mate Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale. Now, Stockdale shares a lot in common with the Republican nominee John McCain: both were prisoners of war for several years, both are/were friggin' old. Now, so far, both characteristics have seemed off-limits for SNL, but that wasn't the case in 1992. As Perot drives Stockdale to the middle of the woods to abandon him, Hartman plays senile, mumbling and shrieking as he suffers Vietnam flashbacks. Tasteless, but hilarious and ultimately tasteless again: Stockdale died of Alzheimer's in 2005.

And so, if I may make a plea to SNL: "Take the gloves off, folks, and start slapping like you mean it!"

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