Saturday Night Live has a strong record of lampooning of presidential election debates, but Hillary Clinton's use of SNL to score political points in a debate may be a first.
In what the Washington Post referred to as Clinton's "postmodern touch" she took the opportunity in the Ohio debate to scold the media for their favorable treatment of Barack Obama, offering: "Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable or needs another pillow."
The injection of SNL into the debate discourse may have opened Pandora's Box; the use of "satire-as-evidence" in a formal debate is likely to spiral in unanticipated ways. David Bauder's AP article--"SNL Writer Surprised By Clinton Remark, Ordered To Write More"--makes clear, that this "pillow talk" is far from over.
Alexandria Stanley in the New York Times went as far as to suggest "the MSNBC debate did look a bit like the `S.N.L.' parody."
The debate was MSNBC's most watched program in the 11-year history of the network (7.8 million viewers) and the first post-strike show was "Saturday Night Live's" best in two years. In two days (Feb. 30th), watch for SNL to be yet again a top draw.
No one can predict what the writers will find funny in their "debate skit," but it is almost certain they will at least play with Hillary Clinton's SNL lines. The humor might surface as anger, whining, self-pity, and multiple-personality.
Humor requires some truth and shared knowledge to work, so sportsmanship and caring, absent a heavy dose of sarcasm, are unlikely choices by the writers.
It is also difficult to see how this next round of the SNL/Debate episode bodes well for the Clinton going into the Sunday/Monday news cycle. SNL humor depends on exaggeration and whichever way Clinton is portrayed will ricochet across the news cycles, not to mention the afterlife with web video.
Techpresident.comtoday had an interesting piece, "How YouTube is Replacing the Soundbite with the Soundblast" arguing that web video amplifies in unprecedented ways political annotations.
The anticipated SNL skit will become part of that commentary, encouraged by Hillary's "real-life debate" statements. It is easy to make the case that the progression Debate --> SNL --> Debate --> SNL will not be entirely fair, but it is the reality of a brave new digital world.
The mediated exposure of debates has fundamentally changed, the spin room has gone digital. . .. And debates and political satire are merging in ways not yet understood; creating a new landscape that conflates debates, news, and entertainment.
