Paliin, Michaels and Fey on SNL

This election year just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

Did you watch “Saturday Night Live?” This past weekend, I thought it Saturday night surreal.

Governor Sarah Palin, fresh from her Indiana appearance at Verizon Wireless in Noblesville on Friday,  appeared on the NBC comedy show Saturday night.

Over the past few weekends, comedienne Tina Fey has been having a field day taking shots at the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. The bits have been a huge hit on the web and helped SNL to some of their biggest ratings in years!

Saturday night, Palin did a wonderful job poking fun at herself. If you haven’t seen the routine yet, click here for a peek. Funny stuff. But strange. There she was…a Vice Presidential candidate standing alongside Alec Baldwin (a frequent critic of Republicans) getting laughs. (It was also a show that featured an Oliver Stone cameo, too!) Those stinging SNL routines have NOT helped Palin’s overall standing in the polls…yet, here she was, taking those same routines head on with that knowing wink that Fey has made even more famous!

Weird. But immensely entertaining.

An apology on Letterman

It was a culmination of a week of unusual events where entertainment shows, particularly comedic shows, took over the political process…and in some bizzare way, I think are doing a service to the electoral process!

Think about it.

Senator John McCain humbly returns to the Ed Sullivan Theatre after standing up host David Letterman a few weeks ago. After admitting he “screwed up,” the Presidential candidate and frequent guest on the show faces some of the toughest and hard-hitting questions from host Letterman, particularly about McCain’s choice of Palin.

The advantage Letterman has over a traditional journalist? If things get a little too tense, he can lean back and interject some humor, something he did more than a few times during the exchange with McCain. A journalist couldn’t or hasn’t pushed questions like Letterman did.

Is it fair?

Why not? Letterman’s show was where McCain decided to announce his bid for the presidential race so many months ago. If Letterman is good enough to start a presidential run, it’s a fair place to ask tough questions.

And it’s paying off in ratings. The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS averaged 6.5 million viewers, the biggest audience for the Late Show in three years since Oprah Winfrey’s visit in December 2005. On the same night, VP candidate Sen. Joe Biden was on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno drawing in an average of 4.6 million viewers.

Saturday night’s appearance of Governor Palin on SNL brought in the best overnight ratings for the show in 14 years, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Comedy and politics. They just seem to go together!

UPDATED INFO:

David Letterman’s stunt busting republican presidential candidate John McCain has folks inside CBS upset according to today’s New York Post.

Bigwigs are upset Letterman’s show tapped into the internal feed of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as McCain was getting makeup applied before a live interview with Katie Couric. That feed was not supposed to be televised.

But they’re complaining off the record. (See what happened when you read the rest of this post.) According to the New York Post, CBS News feels that if they had used an internal network feed to break in on Letterman’s taping, heads would have rolled.

I don’t think anyone at CBS is going to tell Dave what he can’t do…he has a tendency to tell viewers about it. Dave’s not a fan of management…

***** 

In case you didn’t hear, John McCain stood up David Letterman. And Letterman busted him for it.

Here’s the background: Senator McCain was scheduled to appear on Letterman’s show on Wednesday night. Letterman recently had Senator Barack Obama on the program and “Late Show” recorded one of it’s highest ratings of the year. 

So Wednesday night, McCain had his chance.

But McCain called a couple hours prior to the early evening taping to personally tell Letterman he couldn’t do the show that night because he was “rushing back to Washington” due to the economic crisis.

Only problem is…he didn’t rush back to Washington. He rushed over to “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” to do a live interview on that newscast. And since Letterman is also produced for CBS, his crew punched up the live feed of McCain on Couric’s news set getting make-up applied and aired it with Letterman giving caustic commentary. That gave Letterman plenty to comment on…and made the talk show host even more sarcastic.

Think about it…Letterman’s show was good enough for Senator McCain to announce his run for the presidency several months ago.

Now…? 

Dave’s show can be incredibly silly. But I’ve seen the guy do some incredibily probing, straight-forward and very serious interviews, too. He’s no dummy. He’s well read and knowledgeable…how else can you do his style of comedy?  

Then on Thursday night, Letterman says McCain didn’t rush to Washington as he claimed he was going to do…he remained in New York through Thursday morning before going to Washington!

The TODAY SHOW even asked one of McCain’s spokespeople about the apparent snub and the spokesperson said the campaign didn’t think it appropriate for the Senator to appear on a comedy show.

That really set  the talk show host off.

Here’s a transcript of what he said on Thursday night’s show.

“I don’t know if you know about this or not, but last night….Here’s the deal - we do this little TV show every night right here on CBS. And what we do - you see these chairs right here? That’s because we like to have folks come out and visit. And one of the people who was going to visit with us last night was Senator John McCain.

“What a tremendous hero. What a great American John McCain is. Unquestionably, as President Clinton said earlier this week, gave almost everything but his life for this country. And a tremendous hero and a tremendous role model…and he was supposed to be on the show. So at the last minute he calls up and says, “Uh…I can’t make it.” And I said, “What is the problem?” And he said, “Well, the economy. The economy is about to crater.”
***
So I’m scared. I’m starting to tremble a little bit because he said, “I’ve got to race back to D.C.” And I thought, holy gosh… And I hung up the phone and I said to the staff that had gathered at my feet - waiting for words of reassurance from me…OK, everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it. The Senator is on his way back to D.C. So not only did he not go back right away, he stopped by to see Katie Couric on his way out. And then ok, we looked at it and we said, “OK, I understand that. That’s news and this is nonsense.”

But then after Katie Couric, wham-o, right to the airport? …No. No. No. We found out today that he didn’t really leave until this morning. [Boos from the audience.]

Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen. So what we learned today is that the economy held on long enough - just barely held on long enough for him to get back there.

“Whereas, you can see, 24 hours ago, I felt like a patriot. I felt like I was helping out. I felt like I was doing my part. Part of the cause. Fighting the fight. Not part of the problem, I was part of the solution. I was going to help in my own little way get this economy out of the crater. And now I’m just feeling like an ugly date. That’s what I feel like. I feel like an ugly date. I feel used. I feel cheap. I feel sullied. I feel cratered…”

Is it just Dave being cranky? He’s famous for making issues out of everything. (Remember the years long “feud” between Letterman and Oprah?)

Or by busting a presidential candidate in a lie is Letterman going to sway a very, very close election?

There’s nothing like a talk show host scorned.

Especially one that is one of the nation’s premiere political satirists that just so happens to have a searing monologue every night at 11:35pm.