Posted on 01/13/2014 10:00:44 AM PST by EveningStar
In October, shortly after her controversial MTV Video Music Awards act, Miley Cyrus hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live.” She gave audiences another R-rated performance by donning a brown wig to cover her blond Mohawk and grinding to the song, “We Did Stop”—a spoof of her summer hit, “We Can’t Stop.”
Who was Cyrus supposed to be?
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), partying with a flamboyant Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), portrayed by cast member Taran Killam. Bachmann (Cyrus) and Boehner (Killiam) were celebrating the successful shutdown of the federal government, thus proving they could “do whatever they want.”
Ha.
Politically themed duds like these suggest that SNL’s producers may have an agenda other than laughs and ratings. Certainly the show has mocked members of both political parties in the past, but history suggests the jokes have more often than not been one sided. The parodies may seem like they’re all in good fun, but survey experts, political science professors and students make a strong case that SNL can have a noticeable impact at the polls.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
“I can see Russia from my front porch.”
SNL ceased being funny in the late seventies. Now it’s a juvenile collection of unfunny tripe dripping with lefty snark and hubris.
When Reagan got in, I noticed a change. They became snarkier and meaner in their parodies. There wasn't the same gentle kidding tone as in the past. It was about that time I stopped watching. Not that I noticed the politics , it just didn't seem as funny.
Today, I can't remember the last full show I sat through, and up until the Tina Fey imitation of Palin I didn't even realize the show was still on the air.
Good satire should contain both elements of truth and humor. SNL’s offerings rely instead on snark. Sucks to be anyone who has to sit through an episode.
That show hasn’t been funny since the 70s.
I haven’t watched SNL since the original cast left.......................
Finally, we have a genuine scientific study that proves that shows like SNL and the Daily Show are not only slanted Liberal, but actually aid the Democratic candidates.
With these facts, Congress should take action that would require these obviously political shows to be counted as Democratic campaign contributions equal to the amount of advertising earned by the show.
The next step would be to enforce some type of equal time requirements to ensure that these currently liberal shows begin to express conservative views at least 50% of the time.
“The next step would be to enforce some type of equal time requirements to ensure that these currently liberal shows begin to express conservative views at least 50% of the time.”
|
—
Uh,Uh ! That would be opening a can of worms.
.
!
No cans of worms, just fairness on these shows that are designed to destroy Conservatives.
These people have savaged conservatives from Richard Nixon to Ted Cruz.
CNN) — Chevy Chase didn’t look like Gerald Ford and didn’t sound like Gerald Ford. But in the mid-1970s, when “Saturday Night Live” first went on the air, Chase — then a writer and cast member of the show — made his impression of the president, rife with pratfalls and slapstick, the talk of the country.
He also made the president a butt of jokes, which was intentional, Chase told CNN in an interview.
“[Ford] was a sweet man, a terrific man — [we] became good friends after, but ... he just tripped over things a lot,” he said. “It’s not that I can imitate him so much that I can do a lot of physical comedy and I just made it, I just went after him. And ... obviously my leanings were Democratic and I wanted [Jimmy] Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out, and I figured look, we’re reaching millions of people every weekend, why not do it.”
Over the years, “Saturday Night Live’s” political satires have become a mainstay of the show, sometimes to startling effect.
Al Franken — now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota — and his then writing partner, Tom Davis, wrote a wicked takeoff of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “The Final Days,” which included Dan Aykroyd as a bitter Richard Nixon and John Belushi as a toadying Henry Kissinger. In the mid-’80s, a sketch starring Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan showed the president, often lampooned as forgetful, with a razor-sharp command of the Iran-Contra situation, cutting deals in Arabic and barking orders at his staff.
More recently, Dana Carvey’s malaprop-laden impression of George H.W. Bush, Hartman’s puppy-dog Bill Clinton, Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin have embedded themselves in the culture.
Though Chase believes the show leans left, and Fey’s Palin is an attempt to hurt the Republicans, Marc Liepis, NBC Universal senior director of late night publicity, had no comment.
CNN: You mean to tell me in the back of your mind you were thinking, hey I want Carter ...
Chase: Oh, yeah.
CNN: And I’m going to make him look bad.
Chase: Oh yeah. What do you think they’re doing now, you think they’re just doing this because Sarah’s funny? No, I think that the show is very much more Democratic and liberal-oriented, that they are obviously more for Barack Obama. [In the ‘70s], out of the Nixon era, and it was not unlikely that I might go that direction.
CNN: I talked to one political pundit who said, I think Chevy Chase cost Ford the presidency.
Chase: When you have that kind of a venue and power where you can reach so many millions of people and you’ve become a show that people watch, you know, you can affect a lot of people, and humor does it beautifully, because humor is perspective and has a way of making judgment calls. ... So I think there was no question that it had major effect and in fact, in speaking with his family and then later him, and even reading some of his books ... he felt so, too.
Jon Lovitz' portrayal of Michael Dukakis as cold and unfeeling in a debate (after Bernard Shaw asks what Dukakis would do if his wife Kitty were raped) and Darrel Hammond's portrayal of Al Gore as as over-bearing bufoon in his first debate, both significantly shifted the election towards the Republican.
However, don't expect to see a repeat ever again, given the radicalization of the MSM today.
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.