US Presidential elections

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Ford Fairlane

Ford Fairlane

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Tina Fey's (SNL; 30 Rock) take off of Sarah Palin is very funny. In one sketch she just uses Palin's words from a recent interview and even that is funny.

Vice President Debate

Couric interview

Palin mimic pulls in crowds, playing it for laughs

PALIN-200x0.jpg


She was plucked from obscurity to become the most watched woman in America, but now vice presidential pick Sarah Palin's very image is at risk of being hijacked by a hugely successful impersonator.

In recent weeks, millions of television viewers in the United States and internet users around the globe have been treated to hilarious, spot-on portrayals of the Republican politician by comedian Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live (SNL), a weekly comedy stalwart for NBC for more than 30 years.

More here ...
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Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

Ford Fairlane said:
Tina Fey's (SNL; 30 Rock) take off of Sarah Palin is very funny.....
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That was really good. The bit in the 1st one referring to two unwilling teenagers being forced to marry was a real zinger for those a bit more up do date with the real Sarah Palin story.
Odd you posted this in a thread I subscribe to because I'm currently working my way through Desperate times call for measured politics, a blog by Jack the Insider in the Australian. It compares what is happening with the US Republicans to some stuff in Australian politics. I've spent all evening working through it and following the links off to articles or to clips like the ones you posted.
And to get back to the subject, US humour - no probs with their political satire.

Footnote for Arrested Development fans. The actress who plays the interviewer Katie Couric in the second clip FF posted played GOB Bluth's accidental wife in several episodes of that show.
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

That is uncanny! Spot on.

As much as I am an Obama fan, and the thought of Palin in any sort of authority is downright frightening, she is still absolutely adorable. I just wanna pinch her cheeks.
 

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Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

RussellEbertHandball said:
......And Tina Fey's impersonation followed by the real Palin and then the two briefly meeting......
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Thanks for that link, that was quite unusual but also funny. Doesn't exactly make me like Palin anymore but makes her a bit more 3 dimensional. Yes morell, she is a babe, there are plenty of striking looking but very dangerous creatures out there.
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

Palin is indeed attractive, both physically as well as politically. She is a fresh face and very appealing to the media. If she is able to continiue to laugh at herself like on SNL, she will only attract more publicity.

I reckon McCain has indeed made her the future of the Republican party. Win or lose she is going to have an impact on the party. She has a lot more going for her than Dan Quayle ever did. You got to remember she beat an incumbent Republican governor from being endorsed by his own party for its nomination to run against a Democrat for governor. No mean feat and a very rare thing in US politics.
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

RussellEbertHandball said:
Palin is indeed attractive, both physically as well as politically. She is a fresh face and very appealing to the media. If she is able to continiue to laugh at herself like on SNL, she will only attract more publicity.

I reckon McCain has indeed made her the future of the Republican party. Win or lose she is going to have an impact on the party. She has a lot more going for her than Dan Quayle ever did. You got to remember she beat an incumbent Republican governor from being endorsed by his own party for its nomination to run against a Democrat for governor. No mean feat and a very rare thing in US politics.
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Sorry for perpetuating this OT discussion but if Palin is the future of the GOP, it is going to be a long reign for the democrats. The GOP will lose all of its intellectual base (see the likes of David Brooks etc).

She is a dimwit. That in itself may not be a disqualifying factor but the fact that she is ignorant and apparently revels in that ignorance should be.

Usually you write sensibly REH. Unfortunately, in this regard, I think that the Twilight Zone has claimed you.

On the original topic, I am loving Arrested Development. It is a show that keeps on giving.
 
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Palin is like a Republican predictive experiment gone wrong. They gambled on Hilary winning the Democrat nomination and built George Bush a Stepford wife to run against Clinton. No need to ditch the experiment, we can run her as a VP candidate. Try to keep the media away from her tho.

I mean it's all there, visually appealing, with that Christian fundamentalist, folsky, home-spun philosophy, allied to a sunny, goofy "how could you not trust me with a $13 trillion economy and a mess of nuclear missiles pointed at them Godless heathens" disposition.

Mind you, they did install a political savvy chip. She's already been likened to John Edwards who ran as John Kerry's VP choice in 2004 and was seen to be positioning himself for a tilt at the top job the next time round.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2008/10/20/ambitious_sarah_palin_is_john_edwards_of_2008

They couldn't fall for it again, could they?
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

MrMeaner said:
Sorry for perpetuating this OT discussion but if Palin is the future of the GOP, it is going to be a long reign for the democrats. The GOP will lose all of its intellectual base (see the likes of David Brooks etc).

She is a dimwit. That in itself may not be a disqualifying factor but the fact that she is ignorant and apparently revels in that ignorance should be.

Usually you write sensibly REH. Unfortunately, in this regard, I think that the Twilight Zone has claimed you.

On the original topic, I am loving Arrested Development. It is a show that keeps on giving.
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I'm not sure if you interpret my analysis as me being a supporter of her policies etc. The Republican Party is in for a generational change and she will be somebody at the front of the pack of that change. Bush took in a lot of Republicans who were involved with his old man's administration. Now that his administration finishes its days as a failed one, a lot of the guys and gals, associated with it will not have prominent roles on the public side of the party.

If McCain wins Palin becomes VP for 4 years or more. If she losses then she will go back to Alaska and be governor for another 2 to 6 years. I said in my post above, that will mean she has the scope to have an impact on the party.

She might not be the sharpest tool in the shed but that doesn't matter in politics. It's about being able to connect with people and in countries where voting isn't compulsory, unlike ours, energising your base is important. She has proved she can do that and she is an attractive person to the Republican base. She has cut thru with the average person. The smartest peole rarely make good politicians because they have problems communicating with the average person. That's why in Australia they end up in the senate, or as political apparatchik or are senior policy advisers.

To use a footy analogy, the great players rarely make great coaches because they struggle to communicate with the average player. They have a whole different set of expectations to the average player. That's why scrubber half back flankers and back pocket players seem to make the best coaches because they can easily relate to the average player and how to get the best out of them.

An Australian analogy to Palin and Republicans off the top of my head would be Christopher Pyne for the Liberals. Like Palin I will say he is going to have an impact on the party. He is young a generational change from Howard, is more liberal than Howard, younger but still connects with the base of his party. He might not make leader of his party but he will be there on the front bench and rallying the troops.

Palin, being a mum with a kid with a disability will connect with a lot of women trying to juggle the work, home life balance. She will have an impact on those women. Whether they vote for her or not doesn't matter. She has made that connection with them, which a male republican, or democrat can't make.

Remember in the US they only barely get over 50% of people turn up to vote. So you can win if you get about 26-27% of the total adult population, voting for you. That's why I say she will have a impact for her party over the next couple of decades.
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

I understand your analysis REH. Thanks for expanding on it though. It is an interesting take.

That said, I stand by my view that if she is the future of the party, it is in tremendous trouble. If this election is showing anything, it is that the GOP cannot win by simply pandering to its religious, ignorant base. It needs to at least embrace intellectual conservatism too. They have been losing that part of the base ever since Nixon.
 
MM I don't think she is 100% of the future of the party, but will be a significant player. Whether that means winning the nomination, I would doubt it, without maybe 6 to 10 years more experience and broadening her appeal, but she will be on the national stage in the future.

In the US the political numbers game is a lot different than here because voting isn't compulsory. The republicans thru people like Carl Rove in the late 70s worked out a strategy of winning by knowing who, where and what the base will do. Get a large turnout from the base, appeal to enough of the moderates and victory is yours. The republicans do it a lot better than the democrats and the religious right are easier to control than the radical left.

People in Oz tend to deride Ronald Regan. Yeah he was simple, but he was pretty cunning as well. He was smart enough to appeal to the religious right but was able to keep them at arms length from him at all times. McCain is probably the first national republican to be able to replicate that. But he had to counter balance that with getting a true blue conservative like Palin to energise that part of the Party because the repbulican party of 2008 is different to 1980. The other thing about Regan was that he had been a 2 term governor of California, had a lot more life experience than Palin and was a social modrate but economic conservative.

I agree with you that you can't just pander to the religious right. That was supposed to be McCain's strength. But he has retreated since the financial crisis took charge and his pole numbers went south. He just isn't strong enough on the economic side of things to overcome the natural backlash on the whitehouse.

I would say since Nixon, the intellectual side of the republican part has moved to become the backroom boys. They pick blokes and women who they think can be seen as nice people as candidates, deride intellectuals publicly, yet the hard heads are the ones who are driving things in the background. No better example of this ,than the Neo Cons who basically ran the Whitehouse for the first 5 or 6 years of Bush's administration. None of them would have ever gotten elected by the public yet they have run things from the background.

And because things have gone so badly for this republican whitehouse and they lost both houses of congress in 2006 and wont win them back this time, thats why I reckon the republican party are in for generational change unless they can somehow win in November.
 

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Gee big call REH.

The Republicans do need a change, I just can't see it being someone like Palin promoting it.

Whilst I personally think that Obama is going to win the election and Palin will drift into obscurity and only ever be remembered during trivia quizzes, I shudder at the thought that the yanks will stuff this up again.
McCain just might pull it off and we can look forward to Palin perhaps drafting foreign policy as she gazes across the sea and keeps an eye on that mean old Russian Putin's head, making sure it doesn't come into her airspace (WTF????), before turning her attention to who knows which of her numerous current affairs publications that she peruses. You never know she might find an article on the latest significant supreme court ruling that she disagrees with.......:rolleyes:

She is a dunce of the highest order.

Bloody yanks, use your brains! Surely they realise that with McCain at 71 there is a very real possibility that Palin will become the most powerful person on the earth.:eek:

But she is better looking than Biden.
 
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I'd be surprised if she wound up being little more than a footnote in US political history. The longer she spends on the campaign trail the deeper she sinks into the mire. The whiff of corruption over Troopergate, her inability to clearly explain (understand?) the role of vice-president (are you really smarter than a third-grader?) and the debate over her US$150,000 campaign wardrobe (remember this is the Joe Six-Pack hockey mom), are all threatening to derail the campaign even further. And it's not over yet!
 
As with almost all elections that aren't at the local government level, it's a horrible Hobson's Choice for Americans.

Obama the Dumbocrat v McCain the War Hawk. Being conservative, I'd prefer McCain to win when it comes to domestic issues, but on foreign policy issues, I'd prefer Obama. McCain could be downright dangerous when it comes to dealing with Iran, Russia etc.

But both gentlemen know full well they must do the bidding of America's pro-Zionist military-industrial establishment. That's the only way they win their party's nomination in the first place.
 
Re: American comedy - an oxymoron?

MrMeaner said:
She is a dimwit. That in itself may not be a disqualifying factor but the fact that she is ignorant and apparently revels in that ignorance should be.
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A dimwit & dangerous.

And to have powerful figures from the other side saying they are going to vote for Obama speak volumes IMO.

Scary stuff
 
Back to more tasteful stuff, this is quite a funny (IMO) take-off of Palin as a consequence of her deep experience with Russia and foreign affairs.
Bless you YouTube, so much creativity out there.

[YOUTUBE]XR9V_aOCga0[/YOUTUBE]
 
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I know this is just inviting the rekindling of a certain debate already moved out of this thread, but ...

US says it disrupted plot to kill Barack Obama
October 28, 2008 - 7:33AM

BREAKING NEWS: A US government agency says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a murder spree in the state of Tennessee.

In court records unsealed today, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed but predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads, racist youths who shave their heads.

More to come.

Agencies.
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http://www.theage.com.au/world/us-election-2008/us-says-it-disrupted-plot-to-kill-barack-obama-20081028-59wy.html
 
^ Far out!

Never discount the Republicans. Kerry had similar leads before Osama Bin Laden came out and endorsed him. They will always have a massive base turnout.

As with every US election, it will be the swing voters and centralists that decide. Naturally people that can change their mind on a bad gaff or a leaked skeleton.
 
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Ford Fairlane said:
I know this is just inviting the rekindling of a certain debate already moved out of this thread, but ...

http://www.theage.com.au/world/us-election-2008/us-says-it-disrupted-plot-to-kill-barack-obama-20081028-59wy.html
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George W. Bush probably gets about 10,000 death threats per year. Obama gets one from a couple of hairless young morons with more testosterone than brains, and it makes international headlines.

It's a no-brainer, as far as I'm concerned. It's a beat-up by the media aimed at galvanising sympathy and support for Obama to help ensure his victory.
 
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