Sentinel Lunchtime Blog (TV & Movie Edition): Political parodies get more air time
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It hasn’t been Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart or any other political pundit making the most waves in the sea of presidential candidates. It only took two skits for “Saturday Night Live” to have the most influence over the news.
Every national news network, whether it was the nightly news or a 24-hour news network, has at one point, made reference to both of the presidential skits on “SNL” aired over the last two weeks.
For those who may not know of them, one is a debate in which Hillary Clinton receives the hard questions and Barack Obama answers the soft-ball questions ... or foreign diplomat questions that the moderators just answered before asking him. The other skit switches the table, playing off of Clinton’s infamous telephone ad, having President Obama calling Clinton for advice.
While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with using “SNL” as a point of reference, I don’t really remember a time where the show had mattered that much in the presidential campaign. Maybe with the writer’s strike and the sudden re-emergence of the show, people and broadcasters had gotten overly excited about the political possibilities.
Then again, with the exception of these political skits and the digital shorts, “SNL” really doesn’t have much else to offer.
It might also be due to the fact that everyone is just getting tired of campaign coverage and needs a light-hearted break from the mudslinging.
This has probably been the longest stretch for any Democrat or Republican to campaign for a primary, and some of the broadcast news coverage is reflecting that with similar campaign stories of who won which state and who has the most delegates currently. It would get boring for both the news team and the reader if everything was just a glance at what occurred and what to expect for future primaries. Good for Pa. voters, not so good for everyone else waiting for results.
Featured clips of “SNL,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are almost a necessity to break up the monotony of the campaigns and at least make people laugh at some of the attempts candidates are making and will make to get us to vote for them.
The pressure will be on for all three shows to continue churning out clips funny enough (and clean enough) to air on basic cable.
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Lunchtime Blog
We plan to be here every weekday at lunch between noon and 1 p.m. to take a look at what's going on in the news and what we have planned for our newspaper and Web site.
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