Amy Poehler and Tina Fey brought the ghosts of campaigns past to SNL last night.

"Also if it gets too hard just quit, who cares?"For the record Tina Fey's version of Sarah Palin is officially my favorite version of Sarah Palin.

I have little doubt that Palin herself is beyond thrilled that she was being referenced on SNL I imagine there will be some giddy Facebook comment sometime today.

P.S. Oh and there was also this rather brilliant cold opening last night. 

Honest mistake.

Has it been seven years already?

Courtesy of The Decider: 

The great thing about the sketch that Fey and Amy Poehler delivered in the season premiere wasn’t just that it lived up to the hype (and think about that for a second: this sketch was so inevitable that there was hype for it) but that they did so much more than they could’ve gotten away with. Honestly, if they’d just trotted out to the stage, walked Tina through some easy punchlines about moose and Wasila (“Alaska’s crystal meth capital” is still how I think of that city, for better or worse, probably worse), the sketch would have killed. But pairing Palin with Poehler’s Hillary Clinton — something that wasn’t exactly intuitive, as Clinton had largely exited the political conversation by this point — was an act of pure genius. 

Suddenly, the sketch wasn’t just about putting all of Palin’s absurdities on display. It was also about sexism and ageism and double standards and the media’s fascination with sideshows over substance. In a very real way, it set a tone for Hillary just as effectively as it set a tone for Palin. In Poehler’s hands, Clinton was driven, overly intense, and unable to accept defeat, but she was also righteous. By the time she got to the part about offering to lend the media her balls, the audience was whooping their approval.

I still remember seeing this skit for the first time, exactly seven years go today, and realizing that Sarah Palin's chances of ever even get close to the White House had just taken a critical hit.

Because now EVERYBODY saw her as a joke. 

I was blogging about Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and the presidential campaigns everyday. And all of the sudden here came SNL, not only providing awesome material, but making the whole thing fun again.

Amy Poehler's new book discusses her fearlessness, including rapping a song as Sarah Palin, with the real Sarah Palin sitting on set.

Amy Poehler has written a new book, much like fellow SNL alum Tina Fey before her, that discusses her life and what she has learned along the way.

On of those things was to overcome her sense apprehension and to courageously move forward with decisions that others might have balked at.

One of those decisions occurred on Saturday Night Live during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Here is more courtesy of The New Yorker: 

“I like picking fair targets,” Poehler writes in “Yes Please.” This means avoiding jokes that feel “too mean or too lazy.” The most satisfying example of this, perhaps—a perfect deployment of satire—was her Sarah Palin rap, which she wrote, with help from Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg. The conceit was that Palin had planned to do a rap number about herself but had backed out of it, and that Poehler casually agreed to pinch-hit. “One, two three!” she yelled. She presented, in lyric form, the nightmarish essence of the 2008 Palin campaign experience (“When I say Obama, you say Ayers! I built me a bridge, it ain’t goin’ nowhere”; “I got a bookish look and you’re all hot for teacher”), as Palin gamely and helplessly played along, trying to look cool and comfortable. The fact that Poehler did it while nine months pregnant—fully committed, technically perfect, firing finger guns at a moose and doing Cypress Hill-style la-la-las—felt like the ultimate out-mavericking, combining Palin-style trappings of macho-feminine power with humor and smarts. The sketch was scathing but ostensibly respectful, her performance relentless and irresistible. Watching the rap now, years later, the Palin era over, you still laugh and cry with admiration. When she growls, “I’m an animal, and I’m bigger than you!” you feel it. Poehler had her baby a week later, and she watched “Weekend Update” from her hospital bed. 

While not as iconic as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression, Poehler's Palin rap was a real show stopper, made even more memorable by the fact that Palin gamely tried to play along despite the fact that her eyes betrayed her realization that she had suddenly stepped off into the deep end of political parody.

And with lyrics like this who can blame her:

i'm jeremiah wright cause tonight i'm the preacha 
i got a bookish look and you're all hot for teacha 
todd lookin fine on his snow machine 
so hot boy gonna need a go between 
in wasilla we just chill baby chilla 
but when i see oil lets drill baby drill 

my country tis a thee 
from my porch i can see 
russia and such 

For those who may have missed this amazing television moment,  take a moment to enjoy the incredible, and very pregnant, Amy Pohler, and her incredibly naive victim by clicking here.

My favorite moment from last night's Golden Globes.

I laughed way too long and hard at this.

In my defense the audience that was there did the same.

(P.S. Here is the opening.)

Hollywood joins the effort against gun violence.

Courtesy of USA Today:

A group of Hollywood celebrities has a message to share about gun violence. 

Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez, Jaime Foxx, Conan O'Brien, Ellen DeGeneres and other entertainers are appearing in a PSA calling on Americans to "demand a plan" to stop gun violence. 

"How many more?" the stars ask, before action will be taken. 

No more "if we had just done something yesterday," says Aniston in the video, which was released Friday.

Well THAT ought to get some attention. 

Of course the NRA supporters will simply say that the fault for the increase in violence is on the heads of these actors who participate in fake violence in movies, instead of putting the blame on the accessibility of weapons which allow unhinged people to perpetrate REAL violence in our elementary school classrooms.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey return for a "Really?"segment with Seth Meyers.

So good!

And if you liked that you are going to LOVE this segment with the legendary Betty White.



I love it when Betty White gets naughty!

This is right up there with the legendary "Schweddy Balls" segment with Alec Baldwin.