Credit where credit is due. Last night’s Saturday Night Live, which primarily goes after Republicans (which, this year in particular, is a veritable cornucopia of material) went after both sides of the political aisle.
But the most carnage – and its lead skit – was reserved for Hillary Clinton.
From Nicole Hensley’s article for the New York Daily News:
Clinton doppelganger* and SNL cast member Kate McKinnon had her candidate playing to Yankees and “Meets” fans before re-enacting Clinton’s viral — and failed — attempt to use a Metrocard at a Bronx subway station.
“The subway. I love to ride. I’m comfortable riding it,” said McKinnon’s Clinton before swiping half a dozen times with no success.
The actress took a pro-tip from the senator from Vermont and tried climbing over the turnstile. That didn’t work either.
“I’ll just take a cab,” she added.
McKinnon mocked Clinton’s return to her old haunts, where the presidential hopeful served as a two-term U.S. Senator from 2001 to 2009, by casting doubt on her NYC cred. Her bit shows the candidate begrudgingly eating nuts, donning baseball hats and taking a bite out of a street hot dog.
“Later tonight, I’m going to take in the Broadway show that’s got all of NYC abuzz, Chicago,” she said.
Sometimes politicians are very happy to be skewered by SNL. It humanizes them, and gives them a chance to laugh along; to show what good sports they are.
Somehow, though, I doubt Hillary Clinton, whose political use of victimization is legendary, and who is in the midst of a battle for the New York primary, will be taking this quite as amicably – especially since it reinforces exactly the negatives that are hurting Ms. Clinton most: that she is an unlikable phony.
Bernie Sanders, who took a hit also, but small potatoes compared to how they treated Clinton, is no doubt grinning from ear to ear.
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* In case you are unaware, a doppelganger is someone, either real or imagined, who is exactly like another person: e.g. Tina Fey’s character was – sometimes still is – Sarah Palin’s doppelganger.
