The media has apparently stopped picking on Hillary Clinton enough for Saturday Night Live’s liking, because this weekend’s cold-open skit opted instead for a parody of Hillary’s 3 A.M. ad, showing a new President Obama flummoxed by a nuclear crisis and the White House furnace:
Where the previous two debate skits were solidly pro-Hillary, or at least anti-media, this one sent up her aggressive scare tactics, yet in such a way that it offered a little something for Hillary fans. On the one hand, Amy Poehler introduced the “dramatization”: “I’m Hillary Clinton, and I approve this unfair and deceptive message.” On the other hand, the picture of Obama chain-smoking and freaking out in the Oval Office–“Can’t you see that I’m in a panic? A blind, unreasoning and inexperienced panic?”–was a little reminiscent of Will Ferrell’s President Bush, hiding under his desk in the 2001 skit that imagined him a year after inauguration. Everybody wins!
The high-water mark of SNL negative-ad parodies, though, remains this.