I didn't watch tonight's SNL. Like some others, I kinda boycotted it. But since then, I've seen the clips of Palin's bits. I've read a couple other diaries dealing with this, and I've read the story (and many comments) over on HuffPo. I've also posted a couple of relevant comments myself here tonight.
But I wanted to try to get my point across to a broader audience. So I decided to write a diary, rather than just comment in other diaries, since I think my take is a little different than some others.
What I'm talking about is this:
Saturday Night Live should not have allowed Sarah Palin to appear on the show.
It's legal to copy & paste my own comment from another diary here, isn't it? Well...
I don't know... I have a real problem with this. Sorta like there for awhile with the "anti-Bush humor". It was mostly about the way he sometimes mangled the English language. "Good natured ribbing", as they call it. But once it became obvious that Bush wasn't just some slow-witted redneck -- that, in fact, he was a PURE EVIL SCUM -- it all changed. Now you almost NEVER hear the cutesy little jokes about Bush... now most people realize the situation is WAY too serious to go that route.
Same with this Palin person! Most of us here on DKos and elsewhere seem to understand that we need to take her deadly serious. We need to constantly point out that the woman is SCUM... nothing more, nothing less. I'm really disappointed that SNL did this tonight. Whether it was funny or not is beside the point. The point is, allowing someone like Palin to come on the show can not help but "humanize" her. At least a small percentage of people will come away thinking, "Ah, she's not so bad after all."
And that is WRONG.
And here's a couple of replies I got to that one:
(from goodasgold)
ratmach-you are right on. I got a little queasy watching Palin. When you consider her policies, there's absolutely nothing funny about her. Nothing at all.
That said, I think her performance was dreary. I think even the writing was humdrum.
(from Sun dog)
Yep. Same kind of thing. I never found the cutesy humor about Bush to be funny at all. They would hold it up as being tough on him but it just helped cover up the real ugly.
This was a PR dream for the McCain campaign and people are way off base if they don't think this is going to help Palin. Thanks a lot SNL.
(from ankae)
I support you. This is one time I refused to watch SNL. This woman has been pushing a racist overtone and hate filled speeches over the last few weeks. She refused to condemn the radicals at her rallies and has now decided there are some states which are Pro-American and some are not. I refuse to be a part of trying to humanize her. She is another Bush and Cheny combined into a skirt, blouse and boots.
We know how "I would drink a beer with him" turned out - we have 8 years to remember that this cute, funny side is a mask for the evil rantings of the evangelical right. They do this every 4 years and we keep falling for it.
I dont care how good she was and how funny she was. This should make us be more focussed to GOTV, donate and phone bank for the campaign. This is how they play to the average american and steal back votes.
Not this time! Enough!
But of course there's also a chance that this could backfire, as David PA said:
Dunno, all her campaign themes mericlessly mocked. So, she was humanized some, but only after the air was let out of her balloon. In the early Bush mockings, no one was picking apart his stances. Several of Sarah's key 'stances' were picked clean tonight.
He might be right. But I'm still very uncomfortable with this. And while I kinda liked that Alec Baldwin got in a couple strong digs at Palin with her standing right next to him, just the fact that she WAS standing next to him, and he then played along with her, didn't feel right.
I hope nobody will hit me with any "You need to get a sense of humor" remarks. I was raised on Python. And The Far Side, The Onion, and (at least the first couple seasons of) South Park... doesn't get any better than that. But I really think that, when we're talking about REAL people who can cause REAL damage to other REAL people, we need to reconsider what kind of platform to give them.