Saturday Night Live, 50 Years of Groundbreaking Political Satire, Introduction

 

 

Almost from the moment it debuted in 1975 Saturday Night Live has been breaking ground in political comedy. And for nearly as long it has been subject to immense attack from commentators from both sides of the aisle.

With the rise of Fox News and partisan politics it has been mostly a target of Republicans and the right wing, particularly since Donald Trump has become the de facto mouthpiece of the GOP. What might come as a shock to younger viewers is that for far longer, it has been a target of critique from the most strident left-wingers who frequently hold it to the standard that it somehow is not going hard enough in its approach to Republicans. I found examples of this in a book on comedy written in 1983 which argued that Saturday Night Live was not merely overrated but a failure in part because, in the author’s opinion, it had not gone hard enough after then President Reagan.

Not only is denying SNL’s approach to Reagan – in a later article I intend to show just how hard the show went after Reagan almost from the start of his Presidency to the end  - but it shows a problem the left frequently sees in regards to society. It seems to be arguing that the right portrayal of Reagan on a late-night sketch comedy show had greater political influence than journalism, Congress or the voter. And this view is reflecting currently when it comes to how current progressive publications look at SNL’s approach to Donald Trump today. It is a bizarre amalgam of the argument that their approach to satirizing Trump has failed because it either normalizes him in the public eye or hasn’t done enough to make it clear what a danger he is to the entire world. This is an immense burden to put on anybody, and it’s a ludicrous one to put on a late-night comedy show even one that’s been on the air as long as SNL has.

There is a huge disconnect between both sides as to the purpose of SNL’s political parodies of which it remains superbly gifted after fifty years: it is essentially to satirize those in power by point out their flaws for the purpose of humor first and only after that to make a larger statement. That statement is to be left in the mind of the viewer to realize. Saturday Night Live has never had any power, either now or at its inception, to influence the electorate. And those who want to point out the occasions it has – Chevy Chase’s impersonation of Gerald Ford, Tina Fey’s of Sarah Palin – give too much credit to SNL for that and not nearly enough to numerous outside factors. Entertainment’s job is to reflect the mood of the public and there is no evidence that it can do anything to shift the electorate’s opinion. If that was the case after Will Ferrell did his humiliating impression of W in 2000, Al Gore would have won in a landslide and we know that didn’t happen.

What Saturday Night Live has done – extensively and frequently brilliantly – is point out the flaws in our political discourse and political figures well enough to make us laugh hysterically. At the process, at the people and ourselves for voting them in. Its approach to political humor has changed slightly with the times but, when one looks it over the course of its run, not really that much. What has changed is how America views politics, the role of the 24 hour news network and the increasingly ridiculous nature of so much of our politics. And in the last decade there has also been increasing pressure from both sides that political comedy is doing America a disservice, with one side arguing it’s not treating politicians with any respect and the other arguing, just as loudly, that’s its not doing nearly enough to tell America how much danger its in from the other side.  Lorne Michaels himself has acknowledged that its much harder to be funny these days, particularly when so many people on either side truly seem to argue that politics is too important to be mocked.

That is, for the record, exactly why SNL is important today as it was when it debuted not that long after Watergate. No matter how dark the times are we have to be able to laugh at ourselves and the world around us. Some would argue that it’s a luxury we can’t afford; I’d argue it’s a necessity that we can’t reject. One of the tenets of America is the right to free speech and that includes the ability to mock those in power. If people have a problem with that I’d argue that the problem is with them.

I have spent the better part of a quarter of a century watching Saturday Night Live. And as I’ve mentioned in previous articles I have also watched an immense amount of SNL in syndication from the 1980s up until the 1990s when I began more or less watching it constantly. Given that, as well as my extensive knowledge on American history I believe that I have a better qualification to talk about the kind of political humor that SNL has done over the last half-century.

What this series will do is look at how, over the years, many of the greatest comedians on SNL have caricatured and parodies the political figures that have dominated the last fifty years. These include not only the Presidents who have served during that period but also many of the major political figures, some of whom ran for President, some of whom were in the background. It will also look at how the approached changed over the course of time, including in regard to many of those major figures. And it will look at how the show approached Donald Trump – though in this case I intend to focus on the period before he entered politics and not after, mainly because that part has already been extensively covered.

I hope to show that Saturday Night Live hasn’t changed in 50 years in its approach to politics: it’s still doing variations on what it did from the moment Chevy Chase started tripping when he portrayed Gerald Ford. However, I don’t think it has a moral obligation to change its approach at all; if anything it has  a far greater one to do exactly what its been doing for fifty years: keep pissing off the people in authority by making them look like idiots. And I actually think a good way to start show this is to show something that has been a constant throughout its entire run: showing that the political figures (with one glaring exception) have been good sports about it.

 

In the cold open of one first season episode we saw a performance of ‘The Dead String Quartet’. Four cast members were shown propped up at their instruments. Slowly but surely they began to fall over, producing a random chord. The final person to be knocked over was Chevy Chase, who fell off the stage. Just as he opened his mouth, the show cut to footage of Gerald Ford who said: “Live from New York, its Saturday Night!”

This might have been the first real indication of SNL’s place in the cultural Zeitgeist: the President that the show had been mocking since its premiere appeared on film to open it. More importantly it began a trend that SNL has continued ever since: major political figures showing up on the show not so much to entertain (they’ve only been sporadically good at it) but to show they’re fine with being mocked.

As George W. Bush has said recently he never took any of the impersonations that Will Ferrell or his successors did personally. “When you’re in public office, you have to accept that being laughed at comes with the territory.” That’s part and parcel with campaign even before television became part of it; you have to show you’re a human being and there are few better ways to do so then to show you can take a joke.

This happened sporadically during the first few years after Lorne Michaels left the show in 1980. Some elected officials began to host the show. Ed Koch famously did so in 1983 (his monologue where he compares Ronald Reagan to himself is one of the show’s highlights from the decade) and George McGovern and Jesse Jackson did in the lead up to the 1984 election. Jackson came off the best, mainly because he didn’t try to be funny and let the writers do it for him. This may have been clearest after his opening monologue when he left the stage and headed into the broadcast booth. Just before he got there, a warning signal went out, all of the technical people left – and were replaced by African-Americans. The audience laughed and applauded because even in 1984 it was very clear that you didn’t want to get Jesse Jackson upset about racial disparity anywhere.

It's not clear what Reagan thought of the satires on him but his son clearly enjoyed it. One of the highlights in the shows history came when Ron Reagan, Jr. hosted the show. In one of the best cold opens of all time, Ron talks to his parents who are away at Camp David and want to make sure everything goes well at the White House while their son is there. The segment then cuts to Ron Junior, decked out like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and cavorting around the White House to ‘That Old Time Rock and Roll.”

Political cameos were rare in the next decade, though there was a priceless one when Paul Simon, a regular host of the show since its founding came back, appeared on the show In December of 1987. He came out – and there was Paul Simon of Illinois, who at the time was campaigning for President. Simon the Senator was known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, so the two men’s interaction showed both at a comic highlight as the two explained how frequently they got mistaken for each other. “That explains why so many people were disappointed when I showed up at Ames last winter,” Simon the entertainer said.

It’s telling that during the 1990s both of the major Republican nominees for President, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, not only seemed fine with the mockery they were undergoing on SNL but were more than willing to play along. When Dana Carvey came back to the host the show in 1995, George Bush Senior showed up in a filmed segment. “Now there’s a lot of things I could say about Dana Carvey. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent,” he said openly mocking Carvey’s constant catch phrases -which Bush never used. Dole took a step further appearing on SNL after losing the Presidency in 1996 and talking with Norm MacDonald the man who’d impersonated him for nearly two years. “I have to tell you, I never go around saying: “Bob Doles this’ or Bob Dole that,” he told MacDonald. “It’s not just something Bob Dole does.” After that laughter died down, he took a step further. “The thing is Norm; you’re just doing a poorer version of Dan Aykroyd’s impersonation of me. I know it, you know it, and the American people,” echoing Aykroyd’s catchphrase over the better part of years of cameos. Both of these, it should be said, went over far better than the decision to let Steve Forbes host in 1996, where he truly bombed.

 A highpoint came when Al Gore hosted in 2002. Gore, known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, was hysterical from beginning to end. There were two highlights: Gore in a filmed segment on the set of The West Wing with much of the cast, perching himself on the set of the Oval Office and refusing to leave when the shooting was done. “Well, he did win the popular vote,” Bradley Whitford said. Just as funny was Al Franken returning as Stuart Smalley (he had not yet entered politics) and having a session with ‘Al and Tipper G. John McCain actually hosted the show the following year and was willing to parody John Ashcroft on Hardball. “We’re investigating Shaquille O’Neal,” he told Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews. “We understand he played a genie in Kazaam!” It’s telling that even after Tina Fey’s torching of Sarah Palin in 2008, he was willing to appear on the episode just prior to election day, preparing to move into his second career in home shopping. (One of the products he was offering: ‘McCain’s Fine Gold!”)

By that time, of course, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama had made cameos on SNL during the 2008 Democratic primary. Other politicians showed up to mock themselves (David Patterson showed up to taunt Fred Armisen’s parody of him) and just before the New Hampshire primary in 2012 Jon Huntsman showed up on Weekend Update to talk about his campaign and asked Seth if he was registered in New Hampshire. All of which is to say that when Donald Trump was invited to host in the early fall of 2015, a decision that has been criticized at the time and that the cast members regret now, the show was doing nothing it hadn’t done over the past forty years. Saturday Night Live had a long and glorious history of invited actors and figures they had spent years mocking and as anyone who’d watched the show knows Trump had been mocked by the show for decades even before he’d started hosting The Apprentice. There was nothing radical or wrong about their action and they certainly did nothing to ‘normalize’ him in the minds of the public. (As I shall relate in a later article while the show found it hard to satirize Trump, they were accurate in many critical facets of his personality long before he got into politics.) The only difference was, of course, that Trump had no sense of humor and couldn’t take a joke.

What was likely more significant was that, after Trump hosted the show real-life elected Republicans have refused to cameo on SNL. Democratic candidates have been more than willing to do so  -Bernie Sanders showed up to appear alongside Larry David, Elizabeth Warren showed up alongside Kate McKinnon’s portrayal of her, and Joe Biden gave a recording cameo. There’s an argument a major sea change occurred in February of this year when Ayo Edebiri hosted the show.

The cold open featured Trump giving a town hall to women voters – and Nikki Haley was there questioning ‘Trump’. Haley was loose but willing to satirize herself and when Edebiri showed up to call her on her question about the cause of the Civil War, she gave an honest answer. The left excoriated SNL for giving Haley an audience. I’d argue it was the best thing not only for Haley but for future political discourse. For eight years the GOP has steadfastly refused to allow itself even the opportunity to be mocked on television. That Haley was willing to do so  - and took it in the spirit of those like Dole and Bush senior – actually gave me a glimmer of hope during what was increasingly a long and grim election year.

For obvious reasons the right is up in arms when last night Kamala Harris made a ‘surprise’ cameo on SNL alongside Maya Rudolph who has been impersonating her for five years. In my opinion the more interesting cameo came later that episode in one of the most on-point satiric political sketches SNL has done in years.

John Mulaney, who was hosting for the sixth time and who was a writer on the show for years previous, has always been one of the great talents to appear on the show during the last decade. I can’t say how much he participates in the writing process each time he returns but I suspect given the patterns that occur with his hosting (last night we saw what was the fifth Broadway satire of a quintessential New York Institution that comes with each Mulaney appearance) I expect he is welcome. Which makes me sure he wrote the sketch that I’m talking about.

In what his second guest host appearance in 2018 there was a brilliant sketch called ‘What’s Their Name?” in which Mulaney played a contestant who couldn’t recognize people he knew at work or had met on multiple occasions. Last night we saw ‘What’s My Name: Election Edition” Mulaney was again a contestant and Michael Longfellow took over the job of hosting. (I don’t know why Bill Hader wasn’t there but the show didn’t need him.”

Mulaney was playing the role of a white progressive who identified major political figures including Jack Smith. “You sound passionate about this,” Longfellow said. “This is the most important election in my lifetime,” Mulaney said with the solemnity of a progressive. “Democracy is on the line.”

Longfellow then said: “For $300,000, let’s her it from the man himself.” And out came Tim Kaine. “I was Hilary’s running mate in 2016.” Kaine said. “You know, in the most important election in my lifetime when democracy was on the line. What’s my name?” Mulaney’s face quivered with indecision. “Um, Tim Walz,” Buzzer. “Come on, it was eight years ago. That’s less than one Zootopia.” Kaine said. “Not only does he look like Tim Walz but his first name is Tim,” Longfellow said. “We’ll give you three choices. Tim Clinton, Tim Tim or Tim Scott.” Mulaney: “The first two sound  don’t real. Tim Tim!” “No, it’s Tim Scott.”

Kaine erupted. “I’m Tim Kaine.” “Sure you are.” Longfellow said. “I’m a Senator for Virginia. “Good for you,” Longfellow said as Kaine walked off in a huff.

The entire sketch is an instant classic but the part that drove it home was that when offered ten million dollars Kaine came back out – and Mulaney still couldn’t remember his name.

I don’t think this sketch will receive nearly the attention that Harris’s appearance will, regardless of the result of the election. But I’d argue it’s by far the most on-brand and accurate sketch SNL has done about the election. It skewers so many of the targets that are vital, the far left’s Trump derangement syndrome – particularly white progressives – their selective outrage and most importantly, their short memories particularly in regard to their causes. And most importantly, in the appearance of Kaine’s mocking everything that the Democrats have been holding dear for the last eight years – including his role in it -  shows a sign of self-awareness that viewers and indeed the rest of the political media and all around it might do well to keep in mind when they discuss how disastrous the results will be for the election regardless of who wins. The fact that I know that both sides are going to focus on the cold open rather than Mulaney’s sketch won’t surprise me in the least – anymore than it will anyone on SNL.