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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: SNL's Election-Year Politics in the Open... |
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Chevy Chase didn't look like Gerald Ford and didn't sound like Gerald Ford. But in the mid-1970s, when "Saturday Night Live" first went on the air, Chase -- then a writer and cast member of the show -- made his impression of the president, rife with pratfalls and slapstick, the talk of the country.
He also made the president a butt of jokes, which was intentional, Chase told CNN in an interview...
"...obviously my leanings were Democratic and I wanted [Jimmy] Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out, and I figured look, we're reaching millions of people every weekend, why not do it." |
CNN Reports |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:35 am Post subject: |
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No big surprise, I've always assumed that the general slant of SNL was liberal.
I wonder if you've read any National Lampoon from that era. It was written by many of the founding writers of SNL, but it made the TV show look like an exerise in even-handed restraint.
One thing they did was this parody of a patriotic high-school civics textbook, including a little cartoon about an anthropomorised legislative bill becoming a law(similar to the Schoolhouse Rock episode). Only the name of the bill is Kill The Negroes, and the amendment is called Kill The Homos Too. The comic ends with the noose-wielding legislators chasing a scared shitless black guy.
(Interestingly, this satire predated the non-ironic Schoolhouse Rock episode by a few years. I always wondered if Schoolhouse Rock was copying Lampoon, or if they were both referencing an earlier source.) |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:36 am Post subject: |
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| Anyone not familiar with the Schoolhouse Rock episode can do a YouTube search on "How a bill becomes a law". |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| No big surprise... |
Agreed. But the kind of confirmation C. Chase offers here is nice (and very respectable).
Never read National Lampoon. Saw their films, though. I used to read Mad. Did you know that when I was in junior high school, Mad parodied S. Stallone as Rocky and joked that he would be making Rocky sequels into his sixties...? |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:57 am Post subject: |
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| Never read National Lampoon. Saw their films, though. |
Apart from Animal House and the Vacation Films, I'm not sure how many of the films bearing the Lampoon name actually were produced by the company. Some time in the 90s, the magazine went bankrupt, and the name now gets auctioned off to anyone willing to shell out a few bucks in licensing fees.
Much of the humor in Animal House was derived from Doug Kenny's spoofs on college life. Kenny also wrote the textbook satire I mentioned earlier. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 11:59 am Post subject: |
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| I used to read Mad. |
Yeah, Mad was great. From that and All In The Family, I first learned a lot about various political and social issues while growing up in the 1970s. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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| That does not sound quite right. Perhaps National Lampoon licensed its name to other filmmakers? |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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I would imagine that most entertainers would lean liberal. They study the liberal arts, the are creative and encounter gays in their everyday lives. Many work restaurant jobs and other minimum wage jobs for years while trying to break into the industry. While getting started, they live in urban cities and live with and live among and encounter all kinds of people that they want to get along with to have the general society be a better place for themselves to live in, etc.
The only real strong rightwinger I know from SNL is that guy who use to read the SNL news with shoulder-length black hair...the comedian guy who went way conservative and made every joke into a pro-Bush, pro-war slamming all else...can't remember his name...but he became real popular on Jay Leno and other right-wing leaning hosts who also adored Bush's War in Iraq at the time. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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| That does not sound quite right. Perhaps National Lampoon licensed its name to other filmmakers? |
Yeah, I think thats what I was trying to say. The Lampoon name seems to get used nowadays by a whole swack of filmmakers who dont have any connection with one another. |
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manlyboy
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
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| Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 11:28 am Post subject: |
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| Tiger Beer wrote: |
| I would imagine that most entertainers would lean liberal. |
Yes. Conservatives tend to have real jobs. |
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