SNL STILL MAKING IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN (AND THE McCAIN CAMPAIGN)

Via The Page, here's last night's opening sketch on Saturday Night Live, a mock Clinton ad in which she imagines a clueless President Obama needing wise counsel in a nuclear crisis, and turning to her.



Yes, the phone call in the ad is framed by Amy Poehler as Hillary acknowledging that it's an "unfair and deceptive message" made up of "specious talking points." And yes, the Hillary who takes the phone call is straight out of a 1960s sitcom, in face cream and hair curlers and an ugly nightgown.

But the heart of the ad (I'm guessing the frame was tacked on afterward, and might not have been written by the author of the recent newsmaking Hillary sketches, Ann Coulter pal Jim Downey) is a vision of a President Obama who's more clueless and lacking in basic facts than Bush, and is a whimpering emotional wreck -- and who (of course!) picked Al Sharpton as his secretary of state. Frank Zappa, who threw a lot of comedy into his music, used the expression "putting the eyebrows on it" to refer to the way you use emphasis to direct an audience's attention to a joke or other effect -- and what's clear in the phone call part of this sketch is that there are no "eyebrows" suggesting that this is Clinton's absurd fantasy. It's all right-wing bullet points -- not just Obama the unready (and hirer of Sharpton) but Obama the guy whose too willing to trust the Iranians, North Koreans, and Russians. The RNC should send a thank-you gift.

I'm sure some of you will disagree with this interpretation. If so, fire away. And no, I'm not angling for another Wonkette link in which I'm derided as a hypersensitive "Obamaniac."

Oh, and SNL? I know there was an entire two-sentence joke about him in the last night's "Weekend Update," but do you think someday you might get around to doing an entire sketch making fun of John McCain? You know, like sometime before November?

(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)