It's Only Funny If CNN Says It's Funny

Less than a year into the age of Obama I can’t help but feel nostalgic for so many things that have now seemingly been driven to extinction by hope and change. For example, remember those bygone days when news organizations employed fact checkers to verify the veracity of figures in major pieces of spending legislation or the claims of prominent politicians in political ads and debates? Remember how in the name of journalistic integrity fact checking was employed to provide the public with vital information about their government and leaders? Gosh, were we ever so young and naïve to think those things mattered? Before I go on, however, this reminds me of a joke. *AHEM!*

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

CNN.

CNN who?

CNN’s got nothing better to do than fact check jokes.

Okay, I’ll admit upfront that is not a particularly funny “knock, knock” joke; in fact it’s not funny at all because based on recent events it appears to be true. Allow me to explain.

For those of you in the political blogosphere who took the past week off to trek through Outer Mongolia and are just now getting caught up, a week ago tonight Saturday Night Live did the unthinkable: they made fun of Barack Obama in a sketch!

I’ll be the first to admit that I too was actually quite surprised that the same people who skewered Sarah Palin without mercy or even a hint of the truth not only turned their comedic cannons on Barack Obama but hit a bulls eye. The thesis of the sketch, if I might use such a serious word, is that thus far Barack Obama is the do nothing President: a campaigner filled with great promises brought to victory by true believers filled with great expectations and yet to date no accomplishments. To highlight this SNL’s resident Barack Obama stand in Fred Armisen goes down a checklist of campaign promises, none of which have, as of yet, been fulfilled and indeed, as in the case of Afghanistan, things have actually gotten worse. A surprisingly unflattering portrayal by SNL to be sure, and the initially nervous laughs of the audience show just how surprised they were; still the truth will set you free and by the time Armisen declares “live from New York it’s Saturday Night” even the most hard baked New York liberal is laughing out loud (that’s “LOL” for you internet geeks; there was no room in the studio to “ROFL”).

CNN, however, was not amused.

Now we return to my initial point about longing nostalgically for the days when news organizations employed fact checking for things of vital national interest. Arms reductions treaties! Social Security surpluses or deficits! Did Bill Clinton have sexual relations with that woman Miss Lewinsky?! Those were the days, my friends, but CNN has moved onwards and downwards from there to fact checking SNL’s opening sketch about Barack Obama. Say it ain’t so Wolf Blitzer! You look so serious and distinguished with those nifty glasses and your young Santa Claus good looks! Why have you sunk so low? Did CNN only now discover that SNL pokes fun at our politicians? Don’t they remember Will Ferrell’s portrayal of Bush as a cross between a chimp and someone mentally disabled? Were they not outraged at Darrell Hammond’s lustful and cocky Bill Clinton? Or perhaps it is the culmination of, as Bernie Goldberg calls it, a slobbering love affair the mainstream media has with the president they actively helped elect: Barack Obama. I am fairly certain it is the latter.

Were we to take CNN at face value and believe them sincerely concerned about the “facts” in a comedy sketch we must conclude CNN believes all of us to be too stupid to recognize satire when we see it. The real truth, however, has to be that SNL was too close to the truth to be ignored. Hyperbole though there was in the check list of Obama’s unfulfilled promises not a single one was outright false and that is what really got to CNN: SNL had the nerve to actually point out where the President has fallen short in his never ending transition from campaigner to chief executive.

There is one other possibility as to why CNN was so angry: most of us who are politically literate have long since come to see CNN as a comedy channel and they don’t like the competition from the likes of Saturday Night Live.