Holmes: That's entertainment
The comedy writers are back, and suddenly the presidential campaign has gotten even more complicated.
The first part of the campaign spun on the endorsements of political leaders, newspapers, Chuck Norris and Oprah Winfrey. There was plenty of back-and-forth on the news shows, but the candidates were missing from late-night TV for three months because the writers were on strike.
That had to be hard on the writers, seeing all that material pass them by. Think of the Dennis Kucinich jokes never told, the huge cast of candidates that never made it into a Saturday Night Live mock debate.
The relatively humorless political process paraded through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Super Tuesday before the strike was settled. Gradually, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and lesser lights began working their magic on the campaign storyline.
Saturday Night Live made it back on the air Feb. 23, and its fake debates are having more impact than the real ones. The show's opening salvo was built on the proposition that debate moderators and the mainstream media were cozying up to Barack Obama and biased against Hillary Clinton. Later, on Weekend Update, guest host Tina Fey delivered the smartest, funniest and maybe most convincing endorsement Clinton has yet received.
Three days later, in the next real debate, Clinton put moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams on the defensive by citing the SNL skit and accusing them of picking on her by asking her to answer first. Campaign staff and surrogates spent the rest of the week hammering home the media bias line.
The next Saturday's SNL featured another debate skit, this time with "Russert" and "Williams" lobbing softballs at Obama and nasty stares at Clinton. The extra special guest star turned out to be Hillary herself. Two nights later, she showed up to crack wise on Stewart's "Daily Show" on Comedy Central.
The next day, she won Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Coincidence? Let's just say if the campaign didn't think working the entertainment media would make a difference, Clinton would have spent her time somewhere else.
Clinton's SNL offensive worked in several ways. She introduced herself to potential voters who may not watch news shows, showing off her sense of humor and whatever hipness still accrues from a show that stopped being new a quarter-century ago.
But the Clinton/SNL combo also put the media on the defensive. You can bet in the next debate Clinton won't get all the first questions and an assistant producer in the booth will be running a stopwatch to make sure Obama doesn't get a minute more of air time than Clinton.
The media were getting ready to turn on Obama anyway. The biggest media bias is the need for conflict, which is why the press builds up people one week and pulls them down the next with equal glee. But the Clinton campaign's hectoring gave media masters who had been leaning toward Obama an extra push to lean the other way.
Consider MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who deserves more than a push. Matthews took personal offense at Bill Clinton's White House indiscretions and, along with MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, was tough on Hillary from the start. Matthews lost his head the night of the Iowa caucuses, enthusing madly over the historic nature of Obama's win. A few primaries later, he ad-libbed that when Obama speaks, he gets a tingle up his leg.
The ridicule that followed the tingle remark inspired a make-up call by Matthews. A week later, he mercilessly browbeat a Texas state senator who was unable to list Obama's accomplishments on Matthews' command.
As Richard Nixon and a couple of generations of Republicans have demonstrated, "working the refs" can pay dividends. A lot of voters hate the media more than they hate politicians, so they'll have sympathy when a candidate claims to be being treated unfairly. And the media - at least those that haven't intentionally taken sides - respond to criticism by easing up on the candidate who's complaining.
The intimidation of hard-news reporters and cable entertainers who consider themselves journalists is a pretty simple game. But a joke on a late-night comedy show can be a double-bank shot, especially on something like the "Colbert Report," a fake news/talk show with real guests and host who pretends to be a right-winger in order to skewer conservatives. You never know which hole the ball will go in.
Saturday Night Live's impact can last far longer than the grudging laughs its one-liners can elicit. SNL has been shaping perceptions of presidential candidates since Chevy Chase made pratfalls synonymous with Jerry Ford. Dana Carvey's "Wouldn't be prudent" became more closely identified with George H.W. Bush than anything Bush actually said.
At its best, SNL creates caricatures that stick. Its mock debate between Bush I and Michael Dukakis, with Dukakis using an electric lift to make himself look taller and muttering "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy" created a lasting impression that may have cost the Democrat thousands of votes.
Those caricatures aren't always accurate. Jerry Ford, a former college football standout and better-than-average golfer, wasn't really clumsy at all. Al Gore, portrayed on SNL and elsewhere as humorless and stiff, is really neither, say those who know him well. How many votes did Gore lose because people preferred SNL's Bush caricature - a regular guy, if a bit dim - to the stiff know-it-all caricature of Gore?
The SNL effect is complicated further because, with the possible exception of Tina Fey, the intent isn't to promote one candidate over another. Comedy writers want to get laughs, and if one target is easier to hit than the other, they'll go after it.
Saturday Night Live isn't funny any more, especially after the first 20 minutes, but people have been saying that since the Reagan Administration and it keeps going strong. And, thanks to TiVo and YouTube, you don't have to stay up late on Saturday night to watch it or sit through the dumb sketches to get to the good ones, so this election season it may prove more influential than ever.
Just try to remember: Those are comedians, not candidates, and what they are saying isn't the truth. It isn't politics, it's entertainment.
Entertainment on which a close election can turn.
Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.townonline.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.