Over the weekend, while listening to the radio, I heard several advertisements for the Saturday Night Live Tina Fey skit imitating Sarah Palin. I then went home and watched the past skits of the Sarah Palin parody on the Internet. While I did think the imitation was both extremely funny, and very accurate, I could not help but think of how the vastly popular spoof may potentially hurt the McCain campaign by making fun of Palin, or benefit the McCain campaign because it brought so much attention to it. I thought about the large role the media plays in the election, and how elections should be won based on the candidates ideas, and not on the medias’ portrayal of each candidate. In class, we discussed that in viewing history; multiple perspectives of each event should be shown in order to receive an accurate representation of each event. Therefore, I think that since Tina Fey created such an accurate imitation of Sarah Palin, someone should attempt to create a great imitation of either Obama, or Biden in order the level the playing field of the election. However, this seems to be a hard task to achieve, as it is probably difficult to create another precise imitation. So it may be best to simply enjoy the comedy in this election instead of worrying about how it may affect the votes. Still, I cannot help but wonder in such a close race between candidates, McCain and Obama, if the voting results on November 4, 2008 would be different if SNL did not imitate the candidates running for the president of our country. Can comedy affect the election?
2 comments:
I think that these comedians making farce out of the election are taking the seriousness away from it. I would hope that viewers would see this as entertainment, and not a representation for the actual election. I have also seen another skit on snl where a comedian was dressed up as Sarah Palin juggling sticks and saying "i thought this was the talent portion of the election." (i tried to find a copy of the clip that i saw on tv on youtube but i couldnt.) Making fun of Palin for her past career in pageants is a distraction from her current career in politics, and I think the media should be reporting on the present events instead of dwelling on the past.
I found another video in which MSNBC news anchors discuss the use of comedians in political situations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN8IJc-ojHM
It's interesting how these portrayals can impact an election. It's hard to measure precisely, but people do watch SNL (it has a history of influential individuals - John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, among others). Another influential voice is David Letterman. He was very critical of Senator McCain for canceling an appearance; even though McCain appeared on the show last night, did initially "showing up" Letterman hurt his election chances?
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