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“Marriage is… a Sacred Institution Between Two Unwilling Teenagers”

Lauren

No better way to start your day than with Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill, and of course, Tina Fey as Governor Sarah Palin.

I haven’t laughed this hard all week.

Next week, SNL is just going to overdub a laugh track on clips taken directly from the campaign trail.

UPDATE: Aviva has a more serious analysis of what may happen to the public’s perception of Governor Palin when we associate images of Palin and Tina Fey so closely.

17 thoughts on “Marriage is… a Sacred Institution Between Two Unwilling Teenagers”

  4. The tremendous applause and laughter that came after the “unwilling teenagers” bit really made my day.

  5. tina fey and queen latifah were great, but the dude who did biden was pretty weak. the only funny part was the let me repeat this stuff, otherwise it just wasnt that clever.

    whether palin wins or not, i think she’s going to be on america’s radar for a long time to come, so it looks like tina fey is going to have a lot of trouble retiring from SNL for good.

  6. The performance on Biden was funny, but the material was weak. Biden and Obama are pretty sterile ground for parody or satire. Well, Biden is usually more fun but there was nothing in his debate performance that satirist could latch onto. The further satire diverges from reality, the less power it has. That’s exactly why Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin is so absorbing — there are times when she’s literally speaking the words that Palin spoke. SNL writers have to mischaracterize what Biden and Obama say to get anything out of it. The Scranton riff, while kinda funny, bore little to no resemblance to what Biden actually said.

    And have you seen their Obama? The best they can get out of that are corruption jokes based on the fact that he’s (politically) from Chicago. Weak material comedically, and it completely fails as satire.

  7. I really appreciated how hard they hit the same-sex marriage (and “I have a gay friend!”) material. They could easily have steered away from the subject entirely, but instead they skewered Biden for his lip service–not just the easy hit on Palin.

    (Slightly counteracted by the weird “I’ve been pretending to be gay for five years just to kiss you!” sketch later in the show…)

  8. The head of LA NOW has endorsed her?!? I’d link it but the only links I can find so far are freeper-types and I don’t want to give them any traffic. Judging by the extent of the coverage, it’s fair to say they’re loving it and feeling it’s a real “gotcha” moment for feminists. Proving once again, I suppose, that we aren’t to be judged as individuals.

  10. They could easily have steered away from the subject entirely, but instead they skewered Biden for his lip service–not just the easy hit on Palin.

    I thought this was a great (and completely fair) hit against both of them.

    And have you seen their Obama? The best they can get out of that are corruption jokes based on the fact that he’s (politically) from Chicago. Weak material comedically, and it completely fails as satire.

    I think their better jokes about Obama are based on his speech patterns (particularly the way he pauses) and earnestness. I think that there are times when it would be pretty easy to paint him as a Pangloss type. But for the most part, it is much harder to mock him.

  11. It’s not nearly as funny when Queen Latifah repeats things that Gwen Ifill says as when Tina Fey repeats things that Sarah Palin says. Why is that? *scratches head*

    Anywho, go, Queen Latifah, representin’ Jersey!

  12. Thanks for the shout-out (no reference to Palin intended!). It’s not that I don’t find the skit hilarious, because I do, but that I realized my own uncomfortable associations between Palin and Fey and felt they were worth processing.

    @mk: I totally agree that the gay marriage bit was well-done, both Biden’s glossing of the subject and Palin’s emphasis on “tolerance,” which I found so upsetting during the actual debate.

  14. I think their better jokes about Obama are based on his speech patterns (particularly the way he pauses) and earnestness. “

    Absolutely. That’s another point on which I think their Obama falls flat – he doesn’t quite get the uhhh, uhhh, get the speech pattern quite right. Although if I were to write comedy around Obama, I’d go a bit more absurdist and take the “messiah” stuff to its logical comedic conclusion. Have him healing lepers, sinking impossible jump-shots. The punchline would more or less be our expectations of him, the amount of hope we’re pouring into him.

    (I think he’s up to it, and I think he might be remembered as the best president of all time anywhere ever under any circumstances, or at least the Liberal Reagan, but it would make for good bipartisan laughs.)

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  16. I cannot ever, in my life, remember seeing such a spot-on impression of any politician as Fey’s of Palin. This is about the fifth or sixth reason that I have such a mad crush on Tina Fey.

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