When I was a Good Liberal back in 2008, I too laughed at Sarah Palin. I mocked her. I thought she was as stupid as the media said she was and I laughed when Tina Fey lampooned her.
Looking back on that bit, it’s easy to see how in the tank they were for the Democrats. The jokes from Hillary's side are from the inside out. They laugh with her. But Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin is from the outside in. They laugh at her.
We all laughed at her. We shamed her. We destroyed her. And then we sat back and felt like we’d won. And for a while, we did. We had the power to destroy and the power to still be funny and cool. But now, not much remains. Ratings for SNL are way down and there’s zero chance they won’t use SNL to boost the Harris candidacy.
Palin was supposedly ushering in “something dangerous.” That dangerous something was populism, I know know because I understand what was at stake in 2008, the two paths forward for America. Palin was a voice for regular working Americans but was among the first to be painted as a “racist.”
Was she perfect? No. But they mocked how uneducated and “dumb” she supposedly was. Well, here we have a candidate for the presidency who seems even less informed and more “dumb” than Palin, and yet we know SNL will rather be taken off the air than make fun of her for that. They know they could wipe out her candidacy with one joke about word salad. They will rescue her, not sink her.
The funny thing is, we Democrats have thought every Republican from Reagan to George W. Bush to Trump was “dumb.” That never seemed to hurt them when it came to winning. Maybe America likes “dumb.” Maybe that will help Harris more than hurt her. But I can’t help but note the double standard here.
Harris was lampooned on SNL by Maya Rudolph, but not in any way that hurt her career. If anything, it made her even more cool.
On TikTok, Harris is mocked relentlessly by impersonators.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons more people use TikTok. The jokes are funnier because they’re allowed to be.
Harris will appear on the show like Hillary Clinton did multiple times, maybe even tomorrow night. They’ll get big applause, big headlines, maybe better ratings. But everyone will know they pulled punches. We need an SNL to mock SNL.
The Kamala Harris candidacy is such a juicy story, but it’s one Hollywood will never tell. They won’t obsess on her as they did with Sarah Palin to ensure they wrote Palin’s legacy. They will glorify her as they do with all of the Democrats.
You won’t see scenes like this in any movie about Harris because everything Harris doesn’t know and isn’t prepared for will never become a story for them:
Harris will never be lampooned about losing her cool with Lester Holt, or her failures on the border, or how silly she sounded on Oprah. None of that will ever be allowed one month before a crucial election.
Even though there are rumors about how difficult she is to work with, how she doesn’t read the daily briefs, and how she plays solitaire all day in her office — Harris will be spared from all of them. No one wants to be blamed for helping to elect Trump.
It will be the nicest of softballs when SNL resumes tomorrow night. The fix is in.
I liked Sarah Palin and I still like her. I’ve know for my entire life that the party of “tolerance” was truly the intolerant party. It’s also been obvious that the people on the right have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. The “fancy pageant walking” on SNL was funny, even though it was meant to be mean. McCain didn’t have a snowballs chance in that election and everyone knew it. Bush Sr, Bush Jr, McCain, Romney, et al, is why Donald Trump has been successful. All of those men who tried to lead between Reagan and Trump just bent over and took the d from the Ds. Trump doesn’t. And that’s why he’s a “threat to democracy”, except that he isn’t. He’s a threat to democrat power, not democracy.
I apologize for the saltiness of this comment. I’ve had some wine and I usually do not drink. 😄
I know Sarah Palin and met formally with her twice to discuss mineral resource issues in Alaska while she was governor. I was one of the first to congratulate Sarah, Todd, and their kids on election night when the gubernatorial race was called for her. She's smart, well informed, and asked excellent questions. She got stuff done in Alaska and at the time, was the highest rated governor by the National Governors Association. That's a big reason why McCain zeroed in on her. I was very disappointed when McCain talked her into being his running mate. First, I knew he would lose against Obama (the Magic Negro, as Rush wisely observed), but more than anything, I didn't want her to be subject to the horrible and disgusting DNC machine. She wasn't ready for that. She was naive and still believed in fair politics. They broke her and her family in every respect.