I suppose this makes TiFaux a partisan blog
Posted by Dan
February 29th, 2008 at 11:05am
In SNL
By now, I’m sure a good portion of you have seen or at least heard about Mike Huckabee’s appearance on last week’s SNL. (For the rest of you, he appeared on Weekend Update to talk about the dead-end nature of his floundering candidacy.)
Here’s a clip of Huckabee behind the scenes at SNL.
I still can’t really understand why he did it — acknowledge that it’s all over and then go right back to the campaign trail. I’m guessing he’s just hoping that any publicity is good publicity.
But also, I’m struck by how likable and level-headed he seems. When you think about the things he says (letting gay people get married would end civilization, quartine AIDS patients) and then you talk to him in person, the disconnect is huge.
This appearance goes to the heart of my idea that Republicans have nothing on the rest of us when it comes to funny. Huckabee has been pretty consistently humorous throughout the campaign (think of that little “uh oh” he let out in the clip above — great timing!) I don’t think that Republicans not being funny is really a theory I have, as much as it is an assumption I’ve been working under for a long time. Case in point, Fox’s ham-handed attempt at a Daily Show-type program was Half Hour News Hour, which, thankfully, has not caught fire. Or maybe it has in other circles, but I haven’t heard about it in a year.
I guess there have been some funny Republicans. I hate to break it to you, but I think Brian Williams from NBC is actually a huge Republican. Even though we all love him on The Daily Show.
The disconnect between Huckabee’s people skills and his totally fucking crazy political ideas is truly staggering. Every time he showed up on Colbert or SNL I found myself amused by him, and then had to remind myself that he has some crazy, evil, dangerous ideas and would, like, annex my uterus if he were president. But he’s a likable bastard. I’ll give him that. I’m kind of leaning toward a theory that he just ran for president to meet famous people.
I think there can be funny Republicans when they aren’t hatemongers like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Before he became a fascist, Giuliani was memorably funny on SNL about 10 years ago, and according to this possibly disreputable site, Dana Carvey is a Republican. (Isn’t he Canadian?) My dad is a Republican. He’s quite humorous, and also compassionate and decent and fair. He also believes in evolution. I think that’s the litmus test.
Can’t recall his name (and am too lazy to look it up), but wasn’t the head writer of SNL during much of the 90s a self-proclaimed Republican? Not that any Democratic writers wouldn’t have written skits about Lewinsky, et al.
I believe James Downey, one of the big SNL writers during the ’90s and a major collaborator with Norm MacDonald on Weekend Update (one of my favorite Update eras ever, even though the show around it was often bad), is in fact a Republican. I think he still works for the show sometimes on political stuff — I think he had hands in the most recent debate sketches. For that matter, I think Norm himself has self-identified as vaguely Republican (though it would also be easy to tie that into the weakest points of his comic persona, a quasi-”regular guy” homophobia) (assuming anyone gave any thought to Norm MacDonald anymore).
There are many seasons why Huckabee is still campainging, first he wants to pull McCain to the right on some of his core issues. More importantly he is starting to lay the groundwork for another presidential run in 2012. He lacked name reconition this time around to get any major donors so the more his name is out there is cycle, the better start he can get next time.
As for Repbulicans not being funny, its not that Republicans aren’t funny, it just that the Communist Liberals just don’t get the joke most of the time. Of coures the exception being Ann Coulter and only the clinically insane find her jokes funny.
mmm… this borscht is delicious…