Notes on Pop Culture: Tina Fey Hosts 'SNL' & Jon Hamm's Adventure with a Weird Blue Puppet

The awesome Tina Fey, proudly showing off her baby bump, will be hosting this weekend's installment of Saturday Night Live. On this Mother's Day weekend (why is it now considered a weekend-long celebration?), I'm looking forward to Fey making all manner of inappropriate jokes about being in her "delicate" state, as she did in the promos above.

Herman Dune "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" from Jon Hamm

In the meantime, Fey's former 30 Rock fictional flame, Jon Hamm, has a weird video on the web site Funny or Die where he picks up a hitchhiking fuzzy blue dude and takes him on an adventure, where neither of them wear seatbelts in the white convertible, what a safety scandal (!!). Then the duo goes clubbing and Hamm puts the blue guy on his shoulders so he can see the band that was playing. All in all, a really weird video.

Notes on Pop Culture: Poehler on 'SNL,' 'Grey's' Sneak Peek & 'Modern Family'

One of my favorite comedians, Amy Poehler -- of NBC's underrated Parks & Recreation -- is hosting the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. I cannot wait. She’s been especially good when she’s appeared on SNL since departing as a cast regular, though I don’t think it’s possible for her to top the "Palin Rap" she performed when she was pregnant out . . . to . . . there . . . in 2008. NBC has released some promos:



Meanwhile, ABC has released a sneak peek of Grey’s Anatomy’s season seven post-hospital shooting premiere. I watched that shooting episode repeat last week, eerily on the same day when a real life shooting took place at Johns Hopkins. I hope that Shonda Rhimes & Company can deftly capitalize on the raw human emotions that an event like that would spawn but in a non-exploitative way, allowing the after-shocks to linger, instead of just pushing them aside for crazy-case-of-the-week drama.

Judging by a video excerpt ABC released, Derek's response to nearly dying after being shot by a disgruntled patient's husband is to speed like a maniac on the highway and get busted for it.

Don’t forget, tonight Modern Family and The Middle both return tonight. I’m hoping they’ll build upon strong freshmen seasons and that the Modern Family crew -- like the Mad Men folks -- will take its award accolades with grace, not let it destroy the sharp humor of the simple in the show and not muck it up with too many guest stars. *fingers crossed*

Notes on Pop Culture: White Wows on SNL, Beer-Swilling Ferrell Takes the Mound

Betty White Wows on SNL

Saturday night was the first time in a long time that I stayed awake all the way until the end of Saturday Night Live without falling asleep a few times first. The reason? Betty White. White took the material she was given and just killed. Loved seeing an 88-year-old woman, a comic veteran, get her props, and not in a you're-such-a-cute-granny-we're-just-gonna-pat-you-on-the-head kind of way either.

That being said, she wasn't handed top-notch material for every sketch and the skits weren't uniformly funny. But White did the best she could with it and was an inspiration. And seeing all those female former SNL stars -- including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Molly Shannon -- only added to an already enteraining episode. Here was one of the edgy skits in which I think White was an extremely good sport (second favorite was the census skit):



I also admired the snark that Poehler and Fey unleashed during the News Update, particularly when it came to the Greek debt.



Beer-Swilling Ferrell Takes the Mound

So there I was, Morning Joe on in the background, while I was making my kid a peanut butter and fluff sandwich for his school lunch this morning when I saw this video of Will Ferrell pulling an wacky stunt during a Texas minor league baseball game. Introduced as a fresh-from-jail pitched named Rojo Johnson, he popped open a beer can and took a long swig before tossing some warm-up pitches. As for the rest of the story . . . check out the insane video:

'SNL' Had Best Spoof on the Census Yet

I finally caught up with the latest episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Tina Fey and featuring the Teen-Boy-Who-Needs-a-Haircut-But-Doesn't-Shave-Yet.

Thought chocolate husband bit was stupid. Wasn't a fan of the Tiger Woods sketch. Thought the Sarah Palin TV network thing was mildly amusing. (Fey didn't look as much like a Palin Doppelganger this time. I couldn't put my finger on why. The hair, something just didn't look right.) The hot for teacher/Justin Bieber/Fey-wants-to-give-him-a-bath-thing got me to crack a smile amidst my discomfort. (If they did that kind of a sketch with a 15-year-old girl it would be just gross.

My favorite moment? The opening about the census and how it's not a conspiracy by the federal government to pry into your personal life. Priceless.

Jon Hamm Showed a Lot of Skin on 'SNL'

. . . especially when he played U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown -- you know, the guy from Massachusetts who has taken the media by storm with his truck and his Cosmo model background -- in a skit where Brown kept busting into a meeting of congressional leaders. (Hamm/Brown to Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "I want to introduce something to the floor, it's called your panties.") Poor Boston/Mass. accent though, Mr. Hamm.



However that digital short where Hamm played a chest-baring sax player named Sergio who haunted a cursed businessman and later emerged from his wife's womb was uber-creepy.

Notes on Politics: Putting Olbermann in His Place with Mockery

Two Jon Stewart videos in one week . . . unheard of for this web site. But when there's so much news, particularly of the political type, Stewart generally comes through. I can only hope Saturday Night Live is half as good this weekend. This week has been so packed with great political material, SNL HAS to be good, right?

Anyway, back to Stewart . . . earlier this week, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann launched a vicious verbal attack against GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown. When people complained, he came back the next night and added more fuel to the fire. Last night, Stewart ripped into Olbermann:



While I liked Stewart's bit, I still think that Ben Affleck's SNL parody was better:

Pop Culture Quick Hits: 'Men of a Certain Age,' TV as Art & the SNL-Woods Controversy

Men of a Certain Age on TNT

Okay, okay TV reviewer people. I’ll program my DVR to record the premiere of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age tonight at 10. It’s a dramedy about three men -- one divorced, one single, one married -- dealing with a variety of dispiriting events that have happened to them as they flounder about in middle age. You critics have convinced me that Ray Romano demonstrates a degree of depth as the sad sack of a guy who’s been left by his wife and is trying to figure out where his life’s dreams went. You've indicated that this program -- also starring Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula -- is worth an hour of my time. You better be right.

The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley said, “Men of a Certain Age is not violent, exciting or fast-paced, but the series has a quiet charm of its own; it is a believable, sharply observed portrait of ordinary men who, through all-too-common bad breaks and missteps, feel that they are backsliding.”

But they had me at Andre Braugher.

TV as Art

When this decade began, I had twin toddlers at home who were joined by a baby brother in mid-2001. Needless to say, the decade was marked by a lot of TV watching in my house as we didn’t want to have to obtain a second mortgage in order to afford babysitting for our very young children. And while I was watching said TV programs, I noticed the same thing that Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine did, that TV has evolved into art (which is why when people act as though TV’s just for dummies, I bristle. Have they not seen Mad Men?) In New York Magazine’s ode to the decade of the 2000s, Nussbaum penned a love letter to this new generation of TV series, of the ilk that people like me obsess about on blogs like this one:

“. . . [F]or anyone who loves television, who adores it with the possessive and defensive eyes of a fan, this was most centrally and importantly the first decade when television became recognizable as art, great art: collectible and life-changing and transformative and lasting . . . It was a period of exhilarating craftsmanship and formal experimentation, accompanied by spurts of anxious grandiosity (for the first half of the decade, fans compared anything good to Dickens, Shakespeare, or Scorsese, because nothing so ambitious had existed in TV history).”

She continued:

“But as this decade began, it had already begun to dawn on viewers that television was something that you could not just merely enjoy and then discard but brood over and analyze, that could challenge and elevate, not just entertain. And a new generation of prickly, idiosyncratic, egotistical TV auteurs were starting to shove up against the limits of their medium, stripping apart genres like the sitcom and the cop show, developing iconic roles for actors like Edie Falco and Michael C. Hall. As the years proceeded (and technology inspired new styles of storytelling), even network TV could stage an innovative series like Lost. On pay channels, especially HBO, it was a genuine renaissance: Show-runners like David Chase and Alan Ball and David Milch and Michael Patrick King (and his Sex and the City writers) reveled in cable’s freedom, exploring adult themes in shocking, sometimes difficult ways.”

Among the shows Nussbaum singled out as having elevated the craft were some of my favorites: Lost (of course), Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Alias, and a small show I might’ve written about here a few times . . . Mad Men.

SNL-Tiger Woods Controversy

Saturday Night Live went there. With the Tiger Woods scandal. And when they went there, they went, in the opinion of some, too far. With Rihanna, one of this year’s most famous victims of domestic abuse, as the musical guest, SNL had a skit making fun of Woods and domestic violence. The cue cards at the end of the skit where the actor playing Woods had written on the back of them that he was scared and feared for his life at the hands of his abusive wife . . . that was the point at which I was sure they’d gone too far. Several bloggers took umbrage – and rightly so – over the skit and the horrific timing with Rihanna on the show. NYT Arts blogger David Itzkoff has a round-up of quotes from several bloggers who thought the sketch was in poor taste.

What DID I like from SNL this past weekend? The White House party crashers skit. Spot. On.



Image credit: TNT.

You See What Happens When I Give Someone the Benefit of the Doubt?

Clearly the Heene family has a screw (or several) loose. But when I last posted here on Friday, I wasn't 100 percent convinced that the parents had intentionally perpetrated a hoax on the American public, blatantly toying with our emotions in order to secure a reality show contract to become another Jon and Kate, as if they're not enough of a cautionary tale.

Perhaps the kids messed up, I thought, and the 10-year-old mistakenly thought he saw his brother on board that homemade helium balloon while 6-year-old Falcon Heene hid in fear because his dad had yelled at him. I thought it was possible. I wasn't ready to put the cuffs on 'em right away, though the whole thing looked mighty odd.

If there was one thing of which I WAS convinced, however, it was that Richard and Mayumi Heene were certainly guilty of bad parenting, as demonstrated by the Friday morning news interviews they continued to do while their youngest son -- aka faux "balloon boy" -- was literally puking. What kind of a parent keeps going while the kid is sick? The Wife Swap debacles, where the parents encouraged wretched behavior, as well as the rap video with the boys saying manner of awful garbage were solid evidence that the Heenes were poster children for bad parenting.

Then over the weekend, the local sheriff confirmed what many, including myself suspected even though, prior to this, we had no solid proof on which to pin their guilt:

"They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it," the sheriff said Sunday morning, according to the New York Times following a search of the family's home and computers, as well as new interviews with each Heene individually. And as a result, the Wife Swap lunatics may be charged with three felony counts including conspiracy to commit a crime, contributing to the deliquency of a minor and an attempt to influence a public servant, as well as the misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report, according to the New York Times. Children's protective services has also gotten involved in the case.

I further read this morning that Richard and Mayumi met in ACTING class and that they'd been shopping around a reality TV show and had thus far failed. Listening to the 9-1-1 tape, the Heenes seemed to be experiencing parental anguish, which makes me even more angry that I spent even a minute of my life feeling sorry for the heart ache I thought they experienced. But, according to police, it was all bogus. Planned in advance.

Apparently Falcon Heene was the only one telling the truth when he said on CNN that the reason he hid (where, it's still not clear) was because, as he said to his father, "You guys said that we did this for the show."

I think Saturday Night Live put this whole, God-awful mess into the right context:

NBC’s Thursday Night Slate Made Me Laugh

*Warning, spoilers ahead from recently aired premieres of NBC comedys*

I didn’t have high expectations when I turned to NBC last night. Didn’t expect to laugh out loud. But laugh I did. Hope it’s not an aberration.

Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation dramatized an awkwardly twisted parody of how penny-ante political scandals can spiral out of control in short order. Sure, a penguin marriage ceremony at the Pawnee Zoo is silly stuff with no substance, simply a shallow PR attempt to lure foot traffic. But it’s really not that unrealistic to have something as innocuous as a zoo event morph into a scandal. Such as when Leslie Knope inadvertently married gay penguins (she thought it was a male/female pair), making her a target of a conservative family organization that wanted her to annul the marriage, then resign and, simultaneously, a hero to her local gay community. Poehler absolutely pulled this off with aplomb.

I think that broadening the subject matter with which Leslie deals will only help. The first season was a bit bogged down in Leslie’s singular quest to transform a dirt pit into a park. (Hulu now has the season two premiere on its site.)

Speaking of Poehler, she also appeared on Saturday Night Live’s Update Thursdays and did a “Really!?! With Seth and Amy” segment on the recent spate of public incivility. Spot. On. Best line: Seth advising Kanye West about what to do if he sees an older woman holding a “World’s Best Grandma mug” and he thinks some other nana is a better grandma.



I likewise was laughing at The Office’s bizarro first scene. Parkour anyone? Seriously? There’s such a thing?



Community was kind of snappy and kept a running Gilmore Girls-ish loop of pop culture references throughout. Wonder if they’ll be able to keep up the meet-cute conceit and give this show some legs for the long haul.

Anyone else catch the 8-10 NBC slate? Thoughts? By the way, am I the only one who hasn’t heard of Parkour before?

Jon Hamm: Comedian

Okay, I was wholly impressed when Jon Hamm (a.k.a. the dashingly smoldering Don Draper from Mad Men) rocked the house on Saturday Night Live earlier this year. He demonstrated some serious comedy chops, even with a bit as silly as Jon Hamm's John Ham.



Then I watched a new skit he did for Will Ferrell's web site Funny or Die, where he's a bald Lex Luthor asking the president for a federal bailout to help fund his continuing efforts to kill Superman. Wasn't that funny, but I think it was the material more than the delivery. I expected to laugh out loud, but perhaps my expectations were too high. I'd much rather see him as Superman.

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

What do you think?

An Ode to George Bailey

There's a wonderfully sentimental yet somewhat snarky ode to one of my favorite films of all time, It's a Wonderful Life, in the New York Times today.

What I love about this piece by Wendell Jamieson is that many of the reasons he says he's a fan of this movie are similar to mine, like the fact that Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey character is an anti-hero, a flawed, sometimes mean and dispirited soul who feels as though his life has added up to nothing because he's been nothing but a nice guy, a martyr, to the people he loves.

"My affection for It's a Wonderful Life has never waned, despite the film's overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family . . . It's a Wonderful Life is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife."

In the course of writing the story about It's a Wonderful Life, Jamieson contacted an upstate New York district attorney and asked him, if this had really happened, if Uncle Billy had lost the $8,000 and George claimed credit for the error, would George go to prison even if he gave back the money that he got in donations. The answer was, technically, George could go to jail, but the DA said, "He'd be a tough guy to send to jail."

Jamieson also called a professor of urban policy at New York University to ask if Pottersville -- filled with bustling bars and gambling joints -- would've been better off economically than the reserved and quiet Bedford Falls, with its movie house and dying manufacturing base. (The verdict was that gambling money might've been a financial boon in the waning days of American industrial cities.)

But the best part of Jamieson's story was when he called out the character of Harry Bailey as "a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job." Harry's character has perpetually irked me because he's treated like a good guy and while he openly acknowledges that George was always getting screwed -- being stuck with the Bailey Building and Loan, giving Harry his college money, letting Harry skate away from the business when George wanted to travel -- but selfishly proceeds with his plans anyway because George was too kind to get in his brother's way. The aforementioned rage that George winds up expressing on Christmas Eve when he again shoulders the burden of his family's responsibilities -- and they blithely allow him to do so -- is completely understandable. If you let the whole world walk all over you, you're going to blow your top too. And just because Harry delivers THE tear-jerker line of the film at the end, doesn't, in my mind, excuse his behavior.

My one regret about this movie is that, much like life I suppose, there's no justice in the end for the evil Mr. Potter. He gets to sit atop a pile of ill-gotten gains while George Bailey faces jail time for a crime he never committed. Many years ago, the folks at Saturday Night Live concocted their own version of how Mr. Potter might've been paid back for his treachery. (See link to video here.)



I would've loved to have seen Uncle Billy suddenly remember that he accidentally handed the money to Potter and to have seen the mob go get Potter . . . but only to have Potter taken away in handcuffs, not pummeled in the exaggerated way this video shows. But maybe that's just me, displaying some of my trademark sentimental hogwash.

Image credit: Paramount Pictures/New York Times.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: SNL Takes on Blago & Flying Shoes

During Amy Poehler's final appearance as a Saturday Night Live cast regular this past weekend, she and "News Update" partner Seth Meyers provided scathingly sharp commentary on the Blagojevich-selling-Obama's-Senate-seat scandal. (It's at the 2:40 minute mark. Link to the video here.)

It makes me realize how much I'm seriously going to miss Amy Poehler in 2009.

Also over the weekend, President Bush had to dodge, not verbal attacks and criticism from the members of the fourth estate, but shoes. Literally.

This presidential shoe-throwing incident -- in which an irate Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at President Bush's head during a press conference -- looks really bizarre on video (see the link here). It could've been worse, I suppose. The guy could've thrown a belt or something.

Wonder if the Obama folks, who were no doubt watching, were taking notes and thinking of ways to avoid this type of protest in the future, like perhaps making reporters remove their shoes, like we have to do at airport security, before entering press conferences?

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: The Bleeping of Blagojevich

The news coming out of Illinois is absolutely ripe for satire, and the late night comedians haven't let that go unnoticed. Just as they were feeling blue about the departure of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin from the national scene, in walks Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and all his hair.

The Late Show's round-up of TV news coverage of the "Who Wants to Buy a Senate Seat?" scandal made me laugh. (Link here.)



I can't wait to see how Saturday Night Live handles this.

The Many Sides of Tina Fey

Quick, think about Tina Fey.

What comes to mind? Her trademark specs? Her humor? 30 Rock? SNL? Her sexy librarian image? Her wit? Her Sarah Palin impersonation?

The divine Tina Fey is one of those women whose images depends on who's doing the looking. To me, she's a witty and smart woman who's unafraid to showcase those traits first and foremost, dramatized by the fact that she wears glasses and not contact lens most of the time. To someone else, the mention of her name might remind him of comedy, or of his librarian fantasies he hasn't shared with anyone, save his therapist.

And when Tina Fey (it seems wrong to refer to her by just her last name) appears in pop culture confections all dolled up and vampy, her overt sexiness messes with some people's impression of her. "Wait a sec, she's the smart, sassy one, right?" some folks might think. "Why the hell is she doing cleavage shots like Pamela Anderson?"

Which brings us to Tina Fey in the January issue of Vanity Fair, where, alongside a lengthy feature story by Maureen Dowd, are many sexy photographs. Salon's Broadsheet blog reacted to the images with a post entitled, "The sexing up of Tina Fey," in which blogger Sarah Hepola wrote:

". . . [D]espite her disdain for hedonism, she has gone from a 'mousy,' 'goofy-looking' comedy writer who never seemed to put much of a premium on her looks into television's most unexpected bombshell. (Pictures accompanying the article show Fey in five-alarm sexy librarian mode, seductively biting the frame of her glasses and wearing red stilettos.) Fey seems conflicted about her sexuality in a way that might feel familiar to any woman who has found herself choosing between muumuus and fishnets.

. . . Maybe you find this depressing (a brilliant comic mind inevitably reduced to shaking her cleavage). Maybe you find this empowering (a brilliant comic mind finally shaking her cleavage!). Either way, it only confirms what many of us have known for a long time: Tina Fey is one of the most fascinating celebrities out there right now."

The Vanity Fair story does a good job of detailing how Tina Fey is simultaneously nerdy and shy, as well as funny and sexy. I happen to love it that Tina Fey embodies the fact that women have many different, sometimes contradictory sides. She can be witty AND smart AND sexy AND classy AND silly. This reminded me of the fake ad pitch on Mad Men earlier this season when the advertising gurus were trying to land a Playtex account. Their proposed campaign (see art above) suggested that there were two sides of a woman: a siren like Marilyn Monroe or a dutiful wife like Jackie Kennedy, as if those were the only choices.

When it comes to Emmy winning actress/writer/working mother Tina Fey, you see many different sides in the same person. And that's all right with me.

Image credits: AMC and Vanity Fair.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Mom Vote,' Political DNA and McCain/Fey on SNL

I find it grating when pollsters, in trying to predict what will happen on election day, categorize the "mom vote" as if it's one big monolithic vote. You know, you get pregnant, give birth or adopt a kid and then all them dames vote the same way, right? I find it a tad bit patronizing. I rarely hear folks trying to assess how dads are going to vote . . . because dads don't all vote the same way, just like moms don't all vote in the same way.

It was this snarky position that prompted a reporter from the BBC to seek me out and interview me about the "mom vote" for a radio interview that aired today. My interview is part of a larger BBC report on the U.S. women's vote. You can listen to the interview here.

Meanwhile, this weekend's Boston Globe ran a piece suggesting that at least half of your political inclinations hail from your DNA, saying that liberals and conservatives tend to have different reactions to various situations:

"Our place on the political spectrum -- liberal, conservative, or in between -- is powerfully influenced by genetics, new studies show. In the past year, researchers have demonstrated that the brains of liberals and conservatives are physically and functionally distinctive, suggesting that people on either side of the ideological divide are actually wired differently."

I must say, I'm not buyin' it. My family's all over the map when it comes to parties and candidates.

And, in these waning days of this presidential election, Senator John McCain pulled out all the stops and was very funny when he appeared on SNL this weekend alongside Tina Fey, who was playing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The premise of one of the sketches was that while Senator Barack Obama's campaign had enough money to buy primetime spots on a half-dozen networks this weekend, McCain's campaign could only afford a spot on QVC, but with the condition that he and Palin hawk items. (Link to video is here.)

Jon Hamm Steamed up SNL

Let me admit my bias up front: I wanted Jon Hamm to succeed on Saturday Night Live. I'd never heard of him before Mad Men and ever since I started watching the show, I've had a major crush.

But when it was announced that Hamm would host SNL, I wondered if he could be funny, convincingly lighthearted. The answer is, "Yes." Hamm knocked it out of the ballpark.

My favorite bit, of course, was the Don Draper sketch about how to get a woman. (Link here.)



Then there was the sketch which spoofed Mad Men and featured Elisabeth Moss and John Slattery. Best part was the lampooning of Don's "The Wheel" pitch at the end of season one. (Link here.)

'Mad Men' News: Third Season, SNL & Season Two Finale

I'm already in premature mourning over the fact that there will be no more fresh Mad Men episodes after Sunday night's season two finale. We'll have to wait until next SUMMER. That seems like an eternity. How will I possibly stand it? A 13-episode season is not nearly enough Don Draper.

But at least there WILL be a third season, or so says AMC. AMC execs this week ordered a third season of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning Mad Men (if they didn't I would've demanded that they have their heads examined). However contracts have not yet been signed for show creator Matt Weiner and star Jon Hamm. Hello? There is no show without those guys.

In anticipation of Sunday's season two finale, the Boston Globe ran a piece today about what early-60s type food one reporter served at her recent Mad Men-inspired party. None of it, save the steaks and the drinks, sounded appetizing. I've been invited to a Mad Men/60s party next week and I'm still trying to decide which character to emulate. Wonder what the hosts will serve for food. Pigs in a blanket? Cream cheese filled celery stalks? Old fashioneds?

But before we get to the party, we'll be able to get psyched up for finale by watching Jon Hamm host Saturday Night Live this weekend. Hosting this show -- which runs either very hot or very cold -- is such a high-wire act. Not everyone can pull off sketch comedy successfully. On Mad Men, Hamm plays the smoldering, hard-to-read, uber-serious Don Draper. How will that translate on SNL? Hopefully well. I'll have my fingers crossed that it doesn't go badly.

Image credit: AMC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: SNL's Poehler Kicks Serious Butt

Amy Poehler's "Palin Rap" on Saturday Night Live -- the ditty that was "supposed" to be performed by GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- was the funniest piece of satire I've seen. Maybe ever. (Video link is here.)

As for Palin, give her major props for showing up at the set of a liberal-leaning show on which she's been the target of brutal satire (courtesy of the divine Ms Fey) and, essentially saying, "Bring it on." Given the fall of my beloved hometown team (da Sox) last night, repeated viewings of this video are the only things putting a smile on my face right now. Oh, and coffee. The coffee makes me smile.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: SNL Skewers AIG Snakes

Saturday Night Live hit it out of the park last night with its new primetime "News Update" political episode when Amy Poehler and Seth Myers took the AIG knuckleheads to task for blowing nearly $500,000 at a posh retreat, days after getting $85 billion of taxpayer dollars in the form of a bailout.

See here for yourself. The AIG segment can be found at the 2:02-minute mark. By the time they got to the "Oh My God!" section, I was rolling.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Blowing the Ref's Whistle

There are occasions when the ref has to step in and blow the whistle because a foul has been committed. And on the heels of yesterday's post where I called for civility from both presidential campaigns, less character assassination and more issue-oriented discourse, things have only gotten worse. From the John McCain campaign.

After reading several accounts of recent McCain/Palin rallies from a number of news organizations, I learned that a handful of nitwits in attendance shouted things such as, "Kill him," "treason" and "terrorist" when Barack Obama's name was invoked by McCain or Palin. One rally attendee reportedly told an African-American TV network cameraman, "Sit down boy." The McCain campaign has said that neither the senator nor Gov. Sarah Palin heard these shouts from the crowd and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they did not, in fact, hear the reprehensible utterances. But given that they've been widely reported, why haven't McCain or Palin explicitly and prominently said that there's no place in this campaign for that kind of rhetoric and vileness?

The campaign instead, has only revved up the personal attacks by releasing a statement from a man whose father was, 40 years ago, targeted by the group of domestic terrorists, a member of which is now a university professor, associates with the mayor of Chicago and held a fundraiser many years ago for Obama. "Barack Obama's friend tried to kill my family," the man said in a McCain press release as the campaign has also unveiled another online ad on the same topic.

Cindy McCain also amped up the attacks by taking to a podium and saying when Obama didn't vote for a defense funding bill -- which did not contain a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq -- she was offended. ". . . [T]he day Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body." What she did not say was that Obama did vote for a different version of the funding bill which contained a timetable and that he wasn't against giving the troops the materials they need.

Certainly John McCain does not believe his Senate colleague is a terrorist or supports terrorists. Certainly Cindy McCain doesn't believe that Obama wants U.S. troops to not receive the funding they need to keep them safe. (Given that Obama's running mate Sen. Joe Biden -- like McCain and Palin -- also has a son serving in Iraq, this is ridiculous.)

Likewise, I don't see the Obama campaign out there saying that McCain hates Jews and Catholics simply because a reverend whose support McCain actively sought this spring espoused hate-filled rhetoric reminiscent to the ugliness that came out of the mouth of the preacher from Obama's church. I also don't think that people could reasonably suggest that McCain doesn't support the troops because he once voted against a bill whose provisions included funding efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain had principled reasons to vote against it, just like Obama did for his vote.

John McCain is an American hero and should be admired for his noble service to our country. And it's a tragedy that this once principled pol and his campaign are tarnishing that image with such despicable attacks which they know, in their hearts, are disingenuous. They're becoming precariously close to becoming the embodiment of the Saturday Night Live satire that aired a few weeks ago. What a damned shame.