SNL opening skit on Immigration didn't make sense and wasn't funny.

[Peregrine Took]

Reminds me of Tweety when, just when you think he has seen the light, he switches over to the evil side.

Last night they did a thing on the Immigration Executive Order and had Kenan Thompson dressed up like he was the Senate Bill that has been lying around for months waiting for the House to act on it. SNL portrayed it as if it was Obama that was holding it up these many months as, in the skit, he kept kicking it down the stairs. It would crawl back up to him and he would kick it away again. That doesn't even make sense and isn't accurate and it wasn't funny. Don't the writers know what's going on?

Every few weeks I guess SNL has to give the Dems a kick to show the Thugs they are impartial?? I hate that.

[Orrex]

1. I'm not surprised. I have said it many times:

If you took all of the funny stuff from SNL's entire run, you could almost make one good season.

[braddy]

27. The easy to prove how unfunny SNL is

to look at DVDs of the show during the day time, it will shock you how far apart and few the funny skits or moments are.

[Frank Cannon]

39. Even in its heyday, it wasn't that great.

My wife and I caught a few reruns recently with Belushi, Ackroyd, et al. The show does not hold up as well as you think it would.

On the other hand, I rented a few disks with some old SCTVs on it and laughed my ass off.

[CrawlingChaos]

32. Very true

I have no clue how it manages to survive. It's just godawful 99% of the time.

[sketchy]

2. I sat there watching it with a sick feeling

Talk about Disinformation.

I'm wondering if they have to run sketches past their new Comcast masters, or something...

[hollysmom]

3. I think it is just the easy way to explain it,

no reason why they could not have included the bill being stopped in the house though. But who knows who the writers are now, could be a bunch of FoX news rejects, ha ha

[sketchy]

4. Easy way to explain what DIDN'T happen :)

For example, Obama has never actually been presented with a bill, much less pushed it down the capitol stairs.

[Peregrine Took]

5. Yes, it really was shockingly tea party thinking.

I wonder who in the hell wrote it? I'm going to look it up. It was total lies.

[hollysmom]

7. easier than explaining that the bill will not be passed by congress - ever.

if a full explanation would have been given, might have interrupted the flow of the script. long ago and far away, I was an audience for this how. I went to the dress rehearsal which ends a half hour before the show and then ran home to watch the show. I can tell you

1) it is like a different show, the lines are rewritten, skits are added and deleted and edited with in an inch of their life,
2) some times people improve and take it in a different direction.

In this case, I would guess it was written poorly followed by some script choices, like having the bill bounce down the stairs meant writing it the way republicans would have. I don't know if the rumored drug use is still as heavy now, but I heard (on some interview show recently) the drinking is, so basically while the season is on, there is no time for real information.

[still_one]

6. SNL hasn't been funny for years

[Peregrine Took]

8. Here is the link to the "skit" - incredibly wrong and why did they do it????

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/snls-obama-shoves-the-schoolhouse-rock-bill-down-the-capital-steps/

[Enrique]

9. they are telling people Obama vetoed the bill

which of course he didn't and wouldn't. That skit is simply a lie.

[YarnAddict]

10. I think what they were trying to say

is that legislation is supposed to come from the legislative branch--Congress, and that EOs are supposed to be for minor stuff, like naming national parks and holidays.

The immigration thing is major, and should have come through the Congress. It's inexcusable that the House sat on the bill for that long, but it probably could have been handled in a better way than by an EO. It may have set up a genuine Constitutional issue that could come back to bite us in the ass--the same way I fear the Senate's "nuclear option" may. Imagine if the next R prez (and since the last election, I fear that it could happen) starts ruling by fiat.

Remember how upset we all were about Bush's signing statements? Well, same thing.

[sketchy]

14. The Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order

from Abraham Lincoln.

[YarnAddict]

15. Very true,

and one of the results was that we ended up with a very different nation after Lincoln, with a very strong executive and centralized government. Again, depends on whose ox is being gored. The EO is wonderful, as long as the President is doing things we like. Once the shoe is on the other foot, not so much . . .

Imagine, with this as a precedent, the damage a Repug prez could do--bye-bye safety net, for one thing.

[former9thward]

20. Actually it was not.

Lincoln gave the EP as a military order in his capacity as commander in chief. That is why it only applied to slaves in confederate areas. Slaves in union areas (about one million) were not freed.

[joeglow3]

43. This is making the rounds, but isn't true

Don't people verify before repeating?

[SidDithers]

11. I liked the skit about the high school drama production...

That was about it.

Sid

[Ykcutnek]

12. Ted Cruz liked it.

If I managed a show and someone wrote something with a political theme that Ted Cruz liked, people would be fucking fired.

[Logical]

34. And your show would be off the air quickly. nt

[Ykcutnek]

36. Yeah, comedies from a liberal POV always fail.

[Logical]

37. SLN I bet is 90% liberal. We can deal with 10% jokes about us. nt

[Oktober]

13. Link for the lazy...

&list=UUqFzWxSCi39LnW1JKFR3efg

[TeamPooka]

16. They do better with humor from a liberal view like this one....

[bigwillq]

24. That skit was hysterical.

I was watching live and I was rolling. So funny.

[JoePhilly]

17. I wish I could find the skit in which Will Ferrall is Bush, right after ...

... the election with Gore.

It was the week where no one was sure who won.

SNL did two openings, one with Bush as President, one with Al Gore as President.

In the Bush version ... DC is on fire, the country is a wreck, and its only been two weeks. Bush is saying we need to kill all the Ostriches. Cheney was killed in a hunting accident.

In the Gore version ... Bill Clinton is sleeping on the couch, and won't leave. And I think Gore has invented a new energy source.

The Bush opening nails the Bush Presidency, absolutely dead on, before it ever happens. Sadly, I can't find it on-line. It should be used in history books.

[UglyGreed]

19. here ya go

Last edited Sun Nov 23, 2014, 06:56 PM - Edit history (1)

https://screen.yahoo.com/glimpse-possible-future-ii-000000670.html Sorry I thought they all would of been there mad: The skits were called A glimpse of our possible future. Found some but they were scrubbed. The date was 11/04/00 with Charlize Theron and Paul Simon. here's a run down of the show.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/00/00d.phtml

[JoePhilly]

23. That seems to be only the Ralph Nader part.

Pigs flying ... hell is frozen over.

I can't believe the other parts of that are gone!!

ugh.

[UglyGreed]

25. Yes I thought it would include

the other skits. I checked Hulu and Netflix and no go. HMMM how strange, is this some sort of conspiracy? LOL!

[rock]

18. I liked it!

Course, many call me

[AnalystInParadise]

41. I did too

Of course I think in our hyper-politicized country we won't like this EO if in the future there is a Republican president that does something similar. As a poster said upthread, it all depends on whose ox is being gored. We are happy right now, three years from now, when a President Cruz or President Paul or some other whackjob signs an EO stopping the collection of certain taxes, or signs an EO that deals with the Dept. of Health and Human Services funding we will be less pleased.

[former9thward]

21. Humor is humor.

The sketch was funny. You must be unduly partisan if you can only find humor in one point of view.

[sketchy]

22. Things that are not true are usually not as funny

This was not true.

No slur against the performers is intended, because they are truly funny people. It's their material that's objectionable here.


Tina Fey (whose humor I greatly admire), said this in a recent episode of Finding Your Roots:

"I always felt like my job was to sort of just discern, 'OK, how do I see this issue?' and try to write a joke that is a form of telling the truth about what I see. And that’s just the basic thing of a great joke. Just saying something that everyone, when they hear it, they go, 'Ah, that’s true. And I haven’t thought of it that way before.'"

[jillan]

28. Parody is finding the humor based on truth. This was just a bunch of lies.

I was really shocked when I watched it because there were probably people in the audience, and at home, that think that skit was true.

[Logical]

35. They make fun of the GOP much more than us. And people believe them also I assume. nt

[ChazII]

38. I found it funny because

of the take off of School House Rock's "I'm Just a Bill."

[ctaylors6]

26. I thought it said Rs might create an immigration bill some day

Did I hear it wrong? I'm not good at catching every word, but I watched it a few times. Sounded like Keenan said "I’m an immigration bill and one day the Rs might create me so I can become a law"
I took away that they were comparing the bill process (from Schoolhouse Rock) to the executive order process.
I'm sorry if I missed something.

[jillan]

29. I watched it and all I could think was that Lorne Michaels started watching faux.

Because that was a parody on faux talking points.

[Cha]

30. WTF Moment.. The Mayor of NYC likes what the President is doing on Immigration because

John Boehner Won't Bring it to a Vote!


Bill de Blasio Heavy check mark @BilldeBlasio
Follow
Thanks to President @BarackObama, more than 100,000 NYC parents could stay with their children. #ImmigrationAction
5:10 AM - 22 Nov 2014 118 Retweets 85 favorites

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/11/22/a-tweet-or-two-174/

Mahalo for your OP, Peregrine Took

[AnalystInParadise]

42. Do they mean 100,000 law breakers?

I just want to know what they mean.

[Gothmog]

31. I stopped watching this show a while back

It does not sound like I missed anything

[Logical]

33. It is a comedy show about all topics. We will be picked on at times. No big deal. nt

[krawhitham]

40. Well you just summed up the last 20 years of SNL

[lynne]

44. I thought it was well done and funny, too

SNL has had a lot of misses but I liked that skit. I also liked the one about the egg incubator but I'm into chickens. Loved how poor "Bill" kept bouncing down those steps!

Comedy and late night shows take pot-shots on both sides of the political aisles no matter who's in office. There's a lot of humor in politics so SNL skits won't be going away anytime soon. Might as well enjoy them!

[DemocraticWing]

45. I thought it was funny.

I think we can laugh at ourselves sometimes, and this is one case where we should. It's laughable that President Obama had to resort to a massive executive order since Congress can't get anything done.

[davidpdx]

46. I thought the guy who played the bill sung the song pretty damn good

I think you take it too personally. It is suppose to be humor, not the truth. They are spoofing a very good short that was used back in the day by ABC.

[6000eliot]

47. I don't get people thinking it was funny.

There wasn't a single laugh in the whole sketch, regardless of its political point-of-view. That fact is really remarkable, since it featured Kenan Thompson, one of the few performers on the show in the last few years who is consistently funny.