When you've lost SNL.......

If you grew up in the 1970s like myself, you undoubtedly recall television's attempts to educate kids while they were entranced by their Saturday morning cartoons. In particular, ABC TV's Schoolhouse Rock! was not only informative but also somewhat fun. In fact, it was where I received my first insight into how a law is made, thanks to the mid-70s TV tutorial "I'm Just a Bill."





Ah, but as we learned this past Thursday night with President Barack Obama unilaterally usurping current immigration law, the Separation of Powers is sooooo passé.

I don't know about you, but I found it a pleasant surprise to learn that long running sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live actually dinged the President on his actions (I may have been just as gobsmacked that SNL is even still on the air, but I digress).






Interestingly enough, New York Post Entertainment writer Kyle Smith queried a few months ago as to why variety shows and comedians alike seemingly steer clear of skewering the White House's current occupant. After all, SNL in particular had compiled some of the more legendary political satire in its first 33-34 seasons on the air. So why have the Obama years been virtually immune from such mockery?

It turns out the man is completely unmockable.

We learn this from Jim Downey, the longtime “Saturday Night Live” specialist in political japery. “If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, ‘Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10,’” the writer says in the expanded new edition of the “SNL” oral history book, “Live from New York.”

“It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled,” Downey says. “There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature. [Al] Gore had these ‘handles,’ so did Bush, and Sarah Palin, and even Hillary had them. But with Obama, it was the phenomenon — less about him and more about the effect he had on other people and the way he changed their behavior. So that’s the way I wrote him.”

Huh. I betcha I could name nearly a dozen conservative writers (and perhaps even a few left-of-center) who have zinged Obama with some of the more hilarious and, at the same time, biting commentary. Certainly they may have been willing to serve as consultants.

Anyhow, Smith continued.

Got that? The charter Choom Ganger, confessed eater of dog and snorter of coke. The doofus who thinks the language spoken by Austrians is “Austrian,” that you pronounce the p in “corpsman” and that ATMs are the reason why job growth is sluggish. The egomaniac who gave the queen of England an iPod loaded with his own speeches and said he was better at everything than the people who work for him. The empty suit with so little real-world knowledge that he referred to his brief stint working for an ordinary profit-seeking company as time “behind enemy lines.” The phony who tells everyone he’s from Chicago, though he didn’t live there until his 20s, and lets you know that he’s talking to people he believes to be stupid by droppin’ his g’s. The world-saving Kal-El from a distant solar system who told us he’d heal the planet and cause the oceans to stop rising. The guy who shared a middle name with one of the most hated dictators on earth.

Nope, nothing there to mock. No way to get a grip on this polished, oiled obsidian.

I guess all it took for SNL to be inspired was Obama usurping the framework of our country (i.e. The U.S. Constitution) after declaring twice under oath to uphold said tenets.

When you've lost Saturday Night Live........

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