Last night when I got home I drunkenly watched the first few sketches of SNL. Tina Fey knocked it out of the park again with her uncanny Sarah Palin impression. (Oddly enough, the more I see Fey playing her, the less I think they look alike. But her accent and verbal tics are so dead-on that the looks don’t matter at this point.)
The funniest part of the sketch was Palin’s inane answer to the economic question (at about the 3:00 mark in the video above). Last night I thought, “Wow, they’re taking a lot of her phrases verbatim.”
This morning I listened to it again and I realized that they took almost her whole answer verbatim.
Here’s what Fey said:
Like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this. We’re saying “Hey, why bail out Fannie and Freddie and not me?” But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those that are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help um… it’s got to be all about job creation, too. Also to shoring up our economy, and putting Fannie and Freddie back on the right track and so health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending because Barak Obama, you know… We’ve got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans also having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That’s gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation that, you know. Also.
And, as I pointed out earlier, here’s what Palin actually said:
That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.
SNL obviously exaggerated the stupidity of her actual response, but not by much.
There was a joke going around the office that McCain suspended his campaign to distract us from the disastrous Couric interview, and that he wanted to postpone his debate so he could also postpone the VP debate. It’s looking every day like this might actually be the case.
And then there’s this:
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people
are more than concerned about Palin.
The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”
Keep in mind, this is coming from Ed Schultz, a liberal radio host, so obviously take this with an enormous licking block of salt.
Of course, the danger is that all this chatter could actually backfire by lowering expectations too much. If everybody assumes that she’s going to fail miserably, all she has to do is show up to the debate and not drool all over the podium and she’s exceeded expectations.
1 year ago