Like many people, many of my bad habits were introduced to me by older cousins. It was older cousins who introduced my teenaged self to the illicit joy of a warm beer. What could be cooler than that? I learned a lot from older cousins; many of those things I’ve spent years trying to unlearn. But not everything learned from older cousins was an illicit evil though. One of the more benign habits I was introduced to by an older cousin was Saturday Night Live.

Live from New York…

When SNL premiered in 1975, there was nothing like it on television. It looked like a bunch of drugged out hippies had taken over the studios after the adults went home for the night. I don’t know if that was the purposeful intent or carefully crafted image, but it gave the impression that if you were watching the show, you were in on an illicit inside joke.

That was the SNL of the 1970’s. Saturday Night Live now, and for many years, has been part of the mainstream. Of course to me, mainstream means the same drugged out hippies took a bath, switched to wine and cocaine, and started collecting six figure salaries. In media terms, mainstream means liberal, as three decades of Weekend Updates will attest. But this year, things started to look different.

Last spring, during the death spiral of Hillary Clinton’s primary battle, SNL aired their

Image by chrisfreeland2002 via Flickr

Democratic Primary Debate skit. It was a hilarious sketch, but it was groundbreaking in the sense that the basis of the skit was the news media’s obsession and support of Obama. No surprise for conservatives. They are used to the media taking sides, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly. But it’s not an issue that Democrats tend to think of much, regarding it as a right wing wack-job complaint. But Pro-Hillary Democrats, seeing the clip played endlessly on the Sunday morning talk shows, suddenly woke up to realize that was exactly what was happening to their candidate.

This created quite a reaction in the main stream media, with some soul searching on “Hey, are we really being too easy on Obama?” Real world consequences arose when ABC news This Week host, George Stephanopoulos, debate moderator for one of the primary debates, asked Barack Obama about his relationship with William Ayers, former terrorist and current America hater. That debate question ended the media handwringing over going soft on Obama. Stephanopoulos took a lot of criticism from his fellow journalists and leftie blogs for asking too hard a question!

But the issue was out the barn door and Hillary supporters were suddenly on the alert for media bias against their candidate. SNL didn’t let up. The figured they had a winner and rolled with it, letting Tina Fey do a special Weekend update bit, “Bitches Get Things Done,” and a parody of the 3:00AM ad.

Obama went on to take the primary anyway, but SNL helped provide a few speed bumps along the way. The stunning thing though, was that SNL took sides in a Democratic primary, and did not take the hip young choice. They didn’t choose Coke Zero, they went with Tab. I wouldn’t have thought any more about it though, if that had been the end of the unconventional choices to be skewered. The new fall season would roll out, and Obama would be portrayed in all his godhood, and McCain would be portrayed as evil, senile, or both.

Only that didn’t exactly happen.

OK it sort of happened. McCain has been portrayed as senile, or “erratic” as the official Obama terminology goes, but that’s only a small part of the story.

The first McCain-Obama skit featured McCain pointing out that he tried to eliminate an earmark called “Tony Rezko hush money,” which Obama explains he withdrew after Rezko began cooperating with prosecutors. Unless you listen to conservative talk radio, read conservative blogs, or live in the Chicago area, you can be excused if you are only vaguely familiar with that name. He has gotten the bare minimum mention on MSM TV news, so it’s surprising that a SNL writer would even be familiar with that reference. Equally surprising is that an SNL writer would have Obama describe his tax plan as one that would give tax breaks for “bribes, shake-downs and kickbacks.”

The second debate skit featured Obama praising his “friend and mentor”, William Ayers.

One of the more interesting skits was never posted online, but stirred up a lot of protests. James Franco was the guest host the week that SNL did a bit on New York Times reporters preparing to go to Alaska to dig up dirt on Governor Sarah Palin. The story line was the “unproven yet un-disproven” story of incest in the Palin household. Clueless reporters were being briefed on Alaska, which could not have been more alien to these Manhattanites if the New York Times were planning to drop some reporters on to Tatooine, Conservatives took it as an attack on Palin, which normally would have been a pretty good guess considering the multitude of MSM hatchet jobs on Palin. The New York Times was one of the biggest offenders, throwing credibility and fact checking to the winds in order to get any sort of dirt to stick on the Palin nomination. I watched the show the night it was on, and it was not an attack on Palin or her family. It was an attack on big media in general and the Times in particular for it’s tossing out of the normal journalistic standards in order to go after a political enemy. “Unproven yet un-disproven” indeed.

Consider the mortgage bailout skit. In a faux CSPAN press conference, Congressional Democrats congratulate themselves on approving the bailout legislation, while a bumbling Bush is hanging around on the periphery. So far, a normal MSM take on the bailout. Until, after Pelosi points 100% of the blame at Bush in his administration, Bush replies,

Bush: But wait, wasn’t it my administration that had warned about the problem 6 years ago, and it was the Democrats who refused to listen?

Pelosi: What? Who told you that? That’s crazy. It’s completely the other way around.

Bush: OK

Frank: Actually. This time he’s sort of right.

Pelosi: Ssshh! Don’t say anything. He doesn’t know.

Huh? On an SNL skit? Pelosi then introduces some “victims” of the housing crisis, a couple of no job having slackers. Rather than put the blame on “Wall Street” or the Bush administration, this skit blames the people who actually got the subprime loans that they didn’t understand and had no attention of paying on. Some other “victims” include Yuppie investors who lied on their mortgage applications and Herb and Marion Sandler, the real life former owners of a Savings & Loan that was sold to the now collapsed Wachovia. The skit was actually pulled and re-edited to eliminate the line identifying them as “people who should be shot.”

But wait, there’s more. The skit goes on to have Barney Frank explain what happened to the 700 billion bailout, introducing George Soros, currency trader extraordinaire, and moveon.org founder. Soros says the money is his now. On the screen, CSPAN identifies Soros as “Billionaire Hedge fund manager. Owner, Democratic Party.”

Who wrote this skit? Rush Limbaugh?

No. In fact most of the political oriented bits were written by longtime SNL writer James Downey. Downey was the writer of the Hillary debate sketches and coined the word “strategery” in a Bush-Gore debate sketch; a word that has now entered the lexicon. It’s been embraced by the Bush administration and is even the name of a book on the Bush White House. So WTF? Is Downey a secret pro-McCain Republican? Or a typical liberal writer from New York City who has taken the time to educate himself on the latest Republican talking points? According to former SNL writer Adam McKay, Downey is an “Ann Coulter fan” and “right-wing.” If so, how could he have gotten through the interview process and write on SNL for 27 years? Downey himself claims to be a registered Democrat, although if you worked in show biz, wouldn’t you?

I don’t know if Downey is a closet McCain or Obama supporter, but he has certainly shaken the common media portrayal of both Republicans and Democrats this year, and if that means continuing to stay in the Republican closet, please Mr. Downey, stay in the closet.

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