The Bitter Cup

For years Saturday Night Live has been fading into satirical obscurity, with most people convinced that the days when it represented anything close to cutting-edge satire were decades past. However, Tina Fey's recent and hilariously successful impersonations of Sarah Palin have been so spot-on that some are suggesting Fey is actually influencing the election.

Not since Chevy Chase made many viewers perceive Gerald Ford as a clumsy stooge has a television impersonation been credited with altering the political narrative to such a degree, said John Pitney Jr., a professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.

"The parodies may have done a bit of damage. People remember Gerald Ford through the prism of Chevy Chase," he said. "Ford was among our most athletic presidents, and he had a wide-ranging knowledge of public-policy issues. But because of 'SNL,' many came to think of him as a buffoon."

A recent Washington Times poll found 33 percent of independents said the "Tina Fey effect" is hurting the McCain-Palin ticket. Palin is trying her best to laugh off the SNL skits, and her loyal base is furious about what they perceive as the 'disrespectful' parodies. But the damage has been done: Tina Fey has raised SNL's ratings by nearly 50%, and for many it's impossible to separate the real Sarah Palin from the parody. The moral of the story? - Don't run on a presidential ticket if you happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to one of the sharpest, Emmy-award winning humorists around.

Labels: presidential election, Sarah Palin, satire, SNL, Tina Fey

...apparently the results hold up over time. In an interview with Danna Young of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, we discovered something about the smarts of people watching the likes of The Daily Show. (Actually, we discovered many things, and for that I suggest you check out the interview.)

Now, we hear from the Pew Research Center (via Greg Mitchell at HuffPo) that news satire show viewers did better on a current events test than did so called "real news" show viewers. Kinda makes you think, don't it?

Overview of the Pew Survey here.

Don't get me wrong - I like Ben Stiller. Still, hasn't it seemed as though he's been going downhill in recent years? It seems like he's playing the same character in The Heartbreak Kid, Along Came Polly, Night at the Museum, the Meet the... movies, even Madagascar. What happened to the Ben Stiller of The Ben Stiller Show?

Good grief, it's good to know he's still in there somewhere. Tropic Thunder, just released, has been getting fabulous reviews for its satirical take on Hollywood. I've been excited for it ever since Esquire Magazine's write-up on Robert Downey, Jr., whose performance seems to be Oscar-worthy, if the Oscar folks had a sense of humor.

Which is an interesting side point - if it's universally agreed-upon that comedy is much harder to pull off than non-comedy (read: drama), why is it that comedies aren't more widely represented at the Oscars? If the Oscars are supposed to celebrate the best of American filmmaking, then any successful comedy should be shortlisted for an award. Period, paragraph, end of story.

Instead, maybe one out of five of the Golden Globe nominees for Musical/Comedy get an Oscar nomination, while three or four GG Drama nominees get an Oscar nod - and when the Oscar people pull a random flyer out of their hats, it's also a drama. 'Sup wi'dat?


Okay, I digress. Go see Tropic Thunder. Show Hollywood what kind of movies it should be making by voting with your dollars.

If there's one thing that's driven me crazy as an online satirist, it's the consistent drumbeat of people - outside AND inside the field - who insist you can't make any kind of living at it.

That said, I was unexpectedly surprised and pleased to read the latest issue of Fast Company, which features an article entitled, "Who Will Be the Godfather of Web Comedy?"

Why pleased? Not because of any schadenfreude issues, I assure you. (Okay, maybe a little.) The truth is that, while I don't like hearing the downbeat stuff from people who'd sooner quash your dreams than pursue their own, I can take it from someone who's doing a serious analysis of the business. (Thank you, Carlye Adler.)

And there's a lesson to be learned from College Humor, and the fact that their niching has helped them be profitable, whereas powerhouses like Funny or Die are not. It's Business 101 stuff - which, if you want to make a living in online satire, is probably worth brushing up on. ;)

(No mention of JibJab, or of The Onion's foray into video in that article, though - both subjects about which I'd be curious. Anyone know financials/other relevant numbers there?)

How the heck did I miss this - it was practically in my backyard?! I had to read about it months later in Wired - embarrassing.

If you live on the West Coast, here's you're chance to not make the same mistake I did. It was "ROFLcon" here back in April, and a two-day event, but it's ROFLThing in San Francisco for one evening, on August 29th. The deets:

So we’re throwing an evening event in San Francisco, featuring a bushel of short talks from the internet famous and other knowledgeable online culture folks on the past, present, and future of the memescape. Like in April, we’ll be having an open call for various celebrities to show up and lurk around in the audience. It’ll be followed by an open bar and a dance party. So, in other words, it should be a superlatively ridiculous time.

Register here, and tell us all about it afterwards!

Jim Holt, a science writer, wrote Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, which came out earlier this month. So far, it's gotten a four-star rating from reviewers at Amazon, and the Publisher's Weekly review is mostly complimentary - guess I'll have to check it out!

Wired Magazine had a little interview with him in their July issue, which reminded me a bit of the interview we did with Danna Young from the Annenberg School of Communication back in 2004. Seems that Holt's dissecting jokes in a similar way to how Young dissected late-night satire, except on a much longer-term scale.

Satirists have had a hard time lately. Not that they ever have an easy time of it: unless your name starts with "Stephen" and ends with "Colbert", generally the best a humorist can hope for is a life of not-quite-penury, and - if he/she is lucky - to stir the ire of a lot of people, possibly inspiring a serious thought or two. But what is a humorist to do with material that is already beyond absurd? The challenge has become fodder for many a mainstream columnist in recent days in the wake of the New Yorker's recent satirical cover showing Obama (if you don't know what we're talking about, go read a newspaper please).

In fact, there's a double problem: first, Obama's candidacy is in many ways outside the usual realm of acceptable political humor. As the NY Times recently noted, even comic giants Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have struggled to find a punchline to fit Obama. Longtime joke writer Mike Barry, who has worked for everyone from Carson to Letterman, said this:

The thing is, he's not buffoonish in any way... he's not a comical figure.

But while Obama himself is nearly impossible to satirize effectively, the pandemonium his candidacy has generated is also problematic (the second problem), because it's so completely exaggerated. Columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. opined on this recently in the Detroit Free Press:

To be effective, satire needs a situation it can inflate into ridiculousness. But the hysteria surrounding Obama has nowhere to go; it is already ridiculous. In just the last few days, we've had Jesse Jackson threatening to castrate him and John McLaughlin calling him an "Oreo."

Add to that the whispers about Obama's supposed Muslim heritage (not that there's anything wrong with that), the "terrorist" implications of bumping fists, and Michelle Obama's purported use of the term "whitey" (a word no black person has uttered since "The Jeffersons" went off the air in 1985), and it's clear that "ridiculous" has become our default status. What once were punch lines now are headlines.

Faced with this conundrum, what's a satirist to do? Eventually, things will settle down, one hopes. But for the moment, there's not much we can do, except hang on for the ride along with everyone else.

Labels: controversy, New Yorker cover, news satire, Obama