Here's a rare Saturday Night Live skit (from last February, running right before the 1:00 am sign-off) that's consistently funny on the question of just why blacks voters are so loyal to Barack Obama.
I can't find who wrote this particular sketch, but most of what political balance SNL has displayed over the last 35 years displays the fingerprints of Jim Downey, an SNL writer since 1977 (with some gaps). He's the uncle of movie star Robert Downey Jr., by the way.
That's giving us a sketch of the 9/11 hearings.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDeleteFixed.
Interesting that Jim Downey is conservative, while his brother, the father of Robert Downey Jr. who got his son addicted to drugs, is a left-wing maniac. I recently watched Downey Sr. much-praised "underground" racial and political satire "Putney Swope" and found it unfunny and nearly unwatchable.
ReplyDeleteThe first 5 minutes of Putney Swope are funny and then it's just about the worst movie ever made after that. There's some long complicated story about 60s radicalism to explain what happened, but don't forget the drugs.
ReplyDeleteAmazingly, that was pretty dang funny. Thanks for the laughs!
ReplyDelete- A Solid Citizen
RE: the politics of the Downey family,
ReplyDeleteRobert Downey Jr seems to have had some kind of quiet conversion after his prison stints:
“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”
Syon
MMM, could be wrong, but I think that Maya Rudolph might have used "biracial privilege" and smeared on a bit of dark makeup.You know, the kind of stuff that White people aren't supposed to use anymore for playing people of non-European backgrounds
ReplyDeleteSyon
"“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”
ReplyDeleteI think I sorta, kinda had a similar experience in a much milder form, of course.
"You can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal."
ReplyDeleteNot a liberal, according to him, but still someone who supports Obama. Downey was one of the big-name guests at Clooney's recent Hollywood fundraiser.
I clicked on the link, and up came a message saying that the video cannot be viewed by anyone outside the US (which I am).
ReplyDeleteGod, that's so racist. I'm thinking of writing to Malcolm Gladwell about it.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/06/16/egypt-revolution-ends-in-quiet-despair/
ReplyDeleteTraditionally, SNL typically had one black cast member (Garret Morris, Eddie Murphy, Tim Meadows, etc.) and one fat cast member (John Belushi, Chris Farley, Horaio Sanz, etc.). I guess Lorne Michaels decided to combine the two when he hired Kennan Thompson. To be fair to Mr. Thompson however, he is a funny and entertaining performer.
ReplyDeleteThe current and recent SNL cast are pretty good - it's a shame that the writing mostly doesn't do justice to their comic talents.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lapd/kingarrests.html
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