About a Girl

Tina Fey's impressions of Sarah Palin have been funniest when she simply recites what Palin has actually said -- out loud, in public, to a journalist in the context of an interview no less. There is no need to caricature Palin, she does most of the work for you. But the idea that it's some sort of biting satire, come on. It would be amazingly difficult to come up with an entertaining skit that could begin to encapsulate the seething contempt McCain and Palin exude for their opponents and their opponents' voters -- or hell, even McPalin's own voters.

If McCain really gave a rat's ass about which direction the country was going, he wouldn't have given the time of day to a rabble-rousing buffoon like Palin. Genuinely serious conservatives have acknowledged this fact en masse. When Chris Buckley leaves the magazine that is essentially his legacy birthright, because he no longer recognizes the clown car driving the magazine and its political endorsements, maybe, just maybe the fuckin' problem is with McCain and not Buckley. You wouldn't know it to read the 'tards who claim to carry on in the old man's name, though.

For some reason, probably in the name of some misguided veneer of "objectivity", Palin herself will appear on tomorrow night's SNL. Only the show's rather unseemly longevity lends it any credibility to the politically credulous. Aside from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, there is nothing in this country resembling competent satire, and even those two have compromised as they've mainstreamed.

For years SNL has been little more than a sausage factory for idiotic characters somehow being converted into unwatchable 80-minute extended skits. Shit, Bob Roberts had the subversion-lite of SNL nailed over fifteen years ago. It's a defense-contractor-owned petting zoo of political observation, with nothing ever quite finding an envelope to push.

What is Palin going to do during her appearance? Who cares? That's not the point; the event of her showing up to portray herself as a "good sport" about Fey's mindless Fargo-isms is the point. Most likely she'll show up for a 30-second cameo and repeat a couple of Fey's more popular zingers. Oh, snap!!1!1!

But perhaps one of our eminent satirists might like to take on the creeps in Palin's crowds, the perpetually aggrieved losers who have taken to assaulting opposing protesters and now even attacking reporters. Maybe they were just pissed because this guy wasn't from the Völkischer Beobachter.

The operational and philosophical realities of the McPalin campaign, much like those of the nation itself, remain mostly beyond the ability of most satire or even parody. Sure, Fey makes an ideal Palin, and Kristen Wiig did a dead-on Crazy McCain Townhall Cat Lady. But at the end of the day, Fey's there to plug 30 Rock, and Wiig to be in the next opus from the Apatow crew. It's only business, which removes any hope for truly effective satire.

Maybe they'll surprise us all and portray Palin for what she really is, a politically adept but fundamentally ignorant pathological liar and religious freak married to a secessionist, and whose primary skill is demagoguing the most reactionary, thuggish elements of her party's base. I don't think anyone's holding their breath, though the discomfort on the set while Miss Thang is present ought to be palpably entertaining. Too bad we won't get to see that, we just get the faux-self-deprecating good-sport cameo.

Update: Boy, was that ever a big sack of meh. Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey both looked sick to their stomachs, just wanting it to be over, Fey especially seeming tired of the skit itself, tired of being our campaign-season dancing monkey every weekend. Palin looked like she might have a glimmer of recognition that the best she could hope to get out of all this was more stump material for the gibbering rubes who believe her happy horseshit, how she went into the belly of the entertainment industry and came out unscathed. They'll boo on cue for Baldwin and Fey, which is about all the energy they can muster anymore.