March 14, 2008

  • It's ludicrous that Lorne Michaels actually has the chutzpah to claim that recent SNL skits are sympathetic towards Obama.

    A
    good impersonation of Obama might be a sort of hybrid
    between, say, Lawrence Fishburne and Billy D Williams, or Bill Bradley and Bill Clinton. That is, part erudite
    intellectual, part smooth talking charmer. But instead SNL has chosen
    an impersonation that presents Obama as a vacuous empty vessel, which
    simply fails to offer any insight into any mannerisms or tendencies in
    Obama's persona. Instead it comes across like the caricature offered by
    the Clinton campaign of Obama as novice and a lightweight, which is
    simply not accurate in terms of his actual persona in real life.

    And
    these sorts of thing do matter in the sense of promoting a narrative
    that takes hold in the public consciousness, whether it is accurate or
    not.

    For example in 2000, the press obsessed about rather minor
    incidental inconsistencies in some of Al Gore's statements (like saying
    he was flying with the FEMA director when he was actually in a
    different helicopter) and created a narrative that Al Gore was making
    inconsistent statements and wasn't being authentic. Meanwhile, George
    W. Bush got away with flubbing answers to questions all the time,
    because people found him folksy and likeable and already had presumed
    lowered expectations for him anyway.