You Know Things Are Bad When SNL Mocks Kamala Harris

BUCK: Here’s Kamala Harris.

BUCK: So, Clay, I know in law school it’s a big thing. They did it in some of my political science classes too. It was always something of a sport to watch the kid ’cause, like, you could just take the heat right away when the professor calls on you and you didn’t read a single word of reading. You maybe didn’t know what the reading was or you could be the kid in the class who says, “Well, that one is something that really requires astute observation and in-depth…”

You know, you start trying to back into just throwing words together. When Kamala’s speaking about covid policy, it reminds me of that. When she’s talking about diplomacy, it reminds me of that. And here is SNL. SNL is actually mocking Kamala Harris as well.

SNL: Many of the members of Congress attending the State of the Union wore blue and yellow to show their support for Ukraine, while Kamala Harris wore all brown to do what she’s done for the last year: Disappear into the background.

BUCK: You could tell the SNL crowd there was, “Hey, hold on a second!” They weren’t happy. But Kamala has not been an effective VP even by our very low standards of what vice presidents are generally supposed to do, and I think this is big problem. We might even get into some of this Hillary Clinton talk that’s been rising up again in the background.

CLAY: First of all, when SNL suddenly starts to satirize Democratic administrations, you know things are going really bad. I loved the reaction from that crowd because they’re like, “Oh, oh, my! Are we even allowed to make fun of how bad Kamala Harris has been?” That was sort of the intake of breath before you heard the laughter which is a perfect sign that the satire is hitting a spot and also, by the way, that the protected class…

And for a long time — do you remember, Buck — in the first year of the Biden administration when they were saying, “It’s really hard to make fun of Joe Biden. He’s just not a very satirizable.” Making up a word there. “Satire doesn’t really work on him because…” Everybody who was like, “This guy can’t even walk up the stairs! He wears a mask bigger than his forehead. He can’t read off a teleprompter! You’re telling me there’s not fertile ground for mocking Joe Biden?” Now the gloves have kind of come off and they’re finally starting to land some punches on ridiculing him.

BUCK: Think about how much the media in general really made fun… Look, politicians are kind of fair game for a lot of stuff that everyday citizens, it would be uncouth and rude, including making fun of their appearance at some level, though I generally don’t like appearance commentary, period. I try not to do it ever and I think that people shouldn’t do it.

But they were, “Oh, Trump is orange!” and “Orange Man Bad!” and “Trump is obese!” and all this stuff all the time. There was, I think, a cover on The Atlantic that showed him like was he like naked or something? The whole thing is completely insane in terms of all that. Joe Biden, I’ve never seen a person squint so much before in my life, and people that do impersonations of him will actually do that.

Notice on SNL they, to your point, they can’t even think of ways to mimic his personal traits and mimic his speech, because they refused to do anything but be handmaidens to those in power. I mean, SNL is a propaganda program, unfortunately. It used to be comedy back in the Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, and before that days.

CLAY: It used to be. And everybody, by the way, those of us who are old enough to remember washing Johnny Carson or David Letterman or Jay Leno, everybody was equal parts fodder for comedy. You could watch an opening monologue of David Letterman and in the Bill Clinton years, I mean, you talk about somebody whose appearance got made fun of?

Talk about somebody whose personal life got made fun of, and obviously he left a lot of opportunity there with the Monica Lewinsky mess and so many other scandals that surrounded him. But even if you were a Democrat watching David Letterman, Johnny Carson, or Jay Leno, they went after Bill Clinton. And the same thing, by the way, happened with George W. Bush.

And there was an evenhandedness to the ridicule, whether you were Ronald Reagan or whether you were Bill Clinton. And then things changed, and now we basically have, to your point, Buck, the late-night programs have become propaganda networks. They exist primarily to uplift Democratic Party and Democratic politicians.