How “SNL” has shaped politics for 50 seasons: NPR

As a comedy nerd who watched Saturday Night Live Ever since I stumbled upon a rerun of the first episode in the mid-1970s, I have been convinced that SNL has had a profound impact on the way America views politics.

But the show has apparently struggled in recent years as the absurdity of modern politics has caught up with satire. Former President Donald Trump's references to myths about Haitian immigrants eating pets, his Vice President JD Vance's comments about women without children, Vice President Kamala Harris having to defend stories about working at McDonald's as a teenager – these all seem like things , which would have been in sketches from years ago instead of real life.

As a historic election looms and the show begins its groundbreaking 50th season this week, SNL faces a constant challenge: making America laugh — and think differently — about a political world that has gotten stranger than anyone in the premiere the series could have been predicted in 1975.

The show has already taken a summer hiatus because of the three most shocking political events of the year: President Joe Biden's terrible debate performance against former President Donald Trump, Biden's eventual decision to step aside for Vice President Kamala Harris, and Harris' dominant debate performance against Trump. So you'll have to hit the ground running on Saturday when comic actor Jean Smart hosts the show.

A political impact from the start

I decided to pass on some of my crazy theories about SNL's impact over time to Al Franken, who wrote some of the show's earliest political sketches and worked there as a writer and performer for many years before serving as a U.S. Senator for nearly a decade from Minnesota served.

(Franconia resigned from the Senate in 2018 amid misconduct allegations from several women who accused him of touching or kissing them inappropriately. He has denied some allegations, said he remembers others differently, apologized for making some women feel uncomfortable and said he regretted resigning from office.)

When it came to political satire, Franken says he and his fellow SNL writers had a pretty simple goal: create things that would be funny to people who knew both a little — and a lot — about politics.

“We weren't trying to be liberal or conservative,” says Franken, who worked on the show in various stints from 1975 through the first season to 1995, helping to direct classic sketches with Dan Aykroyd as President Richard Nixon in the final season write Days in Office and Dana Carvey as George HW Bush and Ross Perot in a debate.

Quoting another legendary SNL writer, Jim Downey, he adds: “We were just trying to do things… that reward people for knowing something but don't punish them for not knowing it… sketches, that would be funny to everyone, but we also tried to portray them in things that really, really smart people might say, 'Oh, I see.' They put that in there for me.'”

SNL shapes our view of politicians through impressions

When Saturday Night Live When it gets to the heart of a politician's impression, it achieves a unique alchemy: it highlights what is so funny about that person that it can, so to speak, define them in the public consciousness. Often it's something people already suspected about the politician, which reveals how the public feels about his policies or candidacies.

When John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008, Tina Fey delivered a scathing image of the vice presidential nominee as a superficial jerk prone to folksy-sounding word salad in speeches and interviews. Some people even assumed that the politician actually said: “I can see Russia from my house” – one of Fey's Palin jokes announces during a speech The real Palin never said that.

Do you think Gerald Ford was a bumbling idiot? That might be because Chevy Chase is like that played him in the show's first season, despite Ford being a former star athlete. Aykroyd handled Nixon and Jimmy Carter – he nailed Nixon's seedy villainy and Carter's broad smile and youthful charisma, even though neither politician wore a mustache. Dana Carvey's portrayal of George HW Bush as a stiff patrician prone to flailing guns also led people to confuse Carvey's jokes with things the real president said and did.

And there was Darrell Hammond's interpretation of Al Gore during a debate sketch in 2000in which he plays Gore as a clueless technocrat obsessed with the word “locker” to suffocating effect. “I find [that sketch] “We voted for Bush,” Franken says, recalling how Gore’s team reportedly used the sketch to coach the vice president for future debate appearances.

But sometimes impressions are not enough

Because much of the show's political insight relies on impressions, problems arise when SNL doesn't find the right approach. The series never really found a great caricature of Joe Biden, despite everyone from Jason Sudeikis to Woody Harrelson to Jim Carrey playing him.

When I say they had similar problems with Barack Obama, Franken agrees. “[It] It was like trying to climb a smooth, vertical wall,” he says of mocking Obama. “He had nothing to really hold on to. You could get an impression of his voice… but there [weren’t] There are really a lot of bases there.”

The problem with Donald Trump could be the opposite: too many bases. Alec Baldwin nails Trump's dark self-obsession, while James Austin Johnson captures the former president's Stream of consciousness cracklesalthough it remains a challenge to find things funnier or more absurd than what he actually did in real life.

While Maya Rudolph appears poised to demonstrate Harris's cool, efficient power this weekend, the question remains: Who will play crucial figures like Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz and his GOP opponent JD Vance – and what will they be impressions about our politics as a whole? ? (I'm betting on a “cold open” Saturday as Walz and Vance prepare for the vice presidential debate.)

Help audiences process political ideas beyond impressions

There have been effective SNL sketches that address political ideas that go beyond mocking politicians, often under the guise of helping the audience process effective ideas.

One of my favorites is a bit from 2016where Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock sit in an election watch party surrounded by white people. When Trump's election is confirmed, white people are shocked that America elected a candidate with such obvious race and sexism issues, while Rock and Chappelle – as black men familiar with America's hypocrisy – are not.

When politicians appear as themselves

Particularly before the advent of social media, the best way for a politician to escape SNL portrayal was to appear as themselves in the show's sketches. Obama, Palin, Hillary Clinton and even Nikki Haley used this tactic, showing up to look like a good sport while subtly pushing back against the most offensive parts of the parodies.

McCain, who called Saturday Night Live Creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels a frienddelivered one of the most notable guest appearances. He started the SNL episode just before the presidential election in November 2008 with an appearance where the senator – flanked by Fey as Palin and his real wife Cindy – offered counterfeit goods on the home shopping channel QVC and cleverly predicted when Trump would do it Really do it with his own Bibles and luxury watches.

But one of the most infamous political cameos is also the show's earliest, when Ron Nessen, then Ford's press secretary, hosted the show in 1976 and got his boss to pre-record the show's iconic opening line: “Live from New York, It is.” Saturday night.”

Franken says he spontaneously asked Nessen to host the show at an event for Ford – later, he says, Michaels reminded him that it wasn't his job to hand out invites to presenters – but they chose the president for the episode doesn't really exonerate. “We had way too much fun with them and the Ford family wasn’t grateful,” Franken adds. “And I think right after that he lost to Reagan in South Carolina… They hated it.”