"SNL" wimps out with pre-election, no-Bush Darrell Hammond retrospective

[DeepModem Mom]

When It Comes to Political Parody, Upstarts Outrun the Classics
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: November 3, 2006

The pre-election episode of “The Simpsons” on Fox on Sunday contains a harsh critique of the Iraq war. The conservative movement to ban gay marriage was skewered on the most recent episode of “Freak Show,” an animated series on Comedy Central. Political issues are so topical that on tomorrow’s HBO comedy special, “Blonde and Bitchin’,” even Roseanne Barr interrupts her fat jokes to state, “I hate the president.”

“Saturday Night Live,” however, is filling its airtime on NBC with a Darrell Hammond retrospective. Tomorrow’s show consists of clips of his most memorable impersonations, from Chris Matthews to Bill Clinton. Mr. Hammond brilliantly imitates many public figures, but President Bush is not one of them. A look back at highlights from Mr. Hammond’s career is overdue and welcome, but the timing on the eve of the midterm elections seems odd, to say the least.

And that divide pretty much sums up the landscape of political and social satire on television.

“S.N.L.” is now in its 32nd season, and, not so surprisingly, it is no longer the lodestar of political comedy. The series long ago ceded cutting-edge lampoonery to smaller, nimbler cable shows on Comedy Central like “South Park” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which spent the week before the election in Ohio for the Midwest midterm “midtacular.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/arts/television/03stan.html

[Sequoia]

1. They might as well just get off the air.

Useless, so useless these days.

[redphish]

2. True, they lost their edge years ago.