Word: snl
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...want synergy? You want meta-referentiality? Clinton got in a shot at the media. SNL got political validation--a sketch about debates becoming the central moment at a debate. MSNBC got guaranteed free publicity from media folks like myself who love to obsess on the importance of media. Everybody wins...
Politically, Clinton's barb may have been too elliptical and insider-y for voters at home. (In the debate room, it drew applause and boos.) To get it, you needed to have seen the SNL skit and to be familiar with the charge that the press is in love with Obama--in which case, you were probably involved enough to know who you were voting for already. To a Texas or Ohio voter tuning in for the first time, it may have been sympathetic (The media sucks! Woo-hoo!), or it may have been confusing (Uh, getting the first question...
...culturally, though, SNL returned just when Clinton needed it. For months, she's been outgunned in the increasingly important field of political entertainment surrogate videos, while Obama has owned YouTube. There was the parody (unauthorized by his campaign) of the Apple 1984 ad, which made her out to be a Big Sister--like totalitarian. Viral-video chanteuse Obama Girl expressed her love for him in song and across the back of her hot pants. And will. i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, with a host of singer and actor buddies, set an Obama speech to music...
...with Clinton against the wall in a bar fight, SNL handed her not one but two broken whiskey bottles: the debate skit and a brilliant girl-power endorsement from Tina Fey, who obliterated the worst arguments against Hillary--Bill fatigue, her age and the charge that she's a bitch. "Bitches get stuff done," Fey sassed. "Bitch is the new black...
Whatever it is they offer--buzz, cool, a psychological boost--Clinton needed it. So it was unsurprising, if a little weird, to see her staffers injecting SNL into their talking points the following Monday. See, Mom? TV criticism is a real...