Could Tina Fey’s cutting Saturday Night Live parody of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin prove to be a political plus? If viewed in the context of the upcoming Vice Presidential debate’s expectations game, the answer is yes.
Fey’s parody like most satirical comedy is grounded in the use of shared assumptions, which are then shattered or traits that are exaggerated. Here’s her second appearance as Palin on last night’s SNL in a bit lampooning Palin’s interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, which most pundits (including some Republicans) considered disastrous:
The downside for Palin and the GOP: The parody wouldn’t get laughs and be embedded on so many websites if it wasn’t using humor successfully to point out what some perceive as to be truths about Palin.
The upside for Palin and the GOP: All she has to do in her debate with Democratic Sen. Joe Biden is to put in a credible performance and not make any gaffes. She has been kept away from the press by McCain’s high command so she already suffers from a bad press due to her inaccessibility. She has become a comedian’s punchline. And she has been lampooned mercilessly by satirists. If she comes across the debate as being serious, thoughtful and able to respond aggressively with accurate facts to back up her responses, many will consider it a win.
Expectations — and Fey’s two SNL parodies — have now been set so low that even a blah performance with no major gaffes will allow Palin’s partisans to proclaim it a home run and Biden in the eyes of public opinion could indeed be overshadowed.
Meanwhile, Fey can’t wait until her days satirizing Palin are over:
Emmy Awards winner Tina Fey manged to pull off yet another “spot on” impersonation of GOP Sarah Palin in a much expected return as a guest on Saturday Night Live this week. After she and Amy Poehler started off the season with a hugely successful Palin-Hillary Clinton sketch, the comedians reunited for the reenactment of a recent interview that the Republican Vice Presidential candidate gave earlier this week.
The “30 Rock” star, who was just awarded by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with Emmys for lead actress in a comedy series, comedy writing and another one for the show she created, “30 Rock”, is obviously not a Palin fan. She impersonates her brilliantly, but says she wants to get it over with. “I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5,” she said, making it clear that until then, the comedic bits featuring the Alaska Governor will be more ruthless, thus funnier than before.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.