With the autumn return of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" with all new installments, the traditionally reliable pro-Obama skits may be on the back burner as the voter opposition to the president is at an all time high, according to Gallup.
The actor portraying President Obama was the same as last season, Jay Pharoah, but this past Saturday night, the writers seemed to have been paying attention a bit more to the real president's actual job performance. In a takeoff of the recent "60 Minutes" interview with Obama, SNL had a little bit of fun at the president's expense in the cold open, mocking his growing list of problems.
Jay Pharoah
By Cheri Jacobus | October 6, 2014 | 2:16 PM EDT
By Noel Sheppard | September 29, 2013 | 10:12 AM EDT
With ObamaCare about to start signing up its first patients and Congress in the middle of a debate concerning its funding, the folks at NBC’s Saturday Night Live decided to begin their new season this weekend mocking the president and his signature piece of legislation.
The cold open started on C-SPAN with Barack Obama played by Jay Pharoah speaking about the Affordable Care Act at Prince George’s Community College (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
By Noel Sheppard | October 8, 2012 | 9:17 AM EDT
Given the shellacking Barack Obama took at last week's presidential debate with Mitt Romney, one would have thought NBC's Saturday Night Live would have had no difficulty finding material to spoof the event.
Not so according to New York magazine which published a piece Monday entitled "Unlike the Rest of the World, SNL Had a Hard Time Joking About the Debate":
SNL Weekend Update Thursday Concludes Two Episode Run with Some Obligatory, Half-Hearted Obama Criticism
By Ryan Robertson | September 28, 2012 | 1:29 PM EDT
Having spent a considerable portion of their first episode skewering Romney last week, the folks at Saturday Night Live's special "Weekend Update Thursday" program decided to lampoon President Obama, although in doing so, the mockery wasn't as full-throated and nasty as it was against Romney, who was portrayed as a plutocratic racist.
Comedian Jay Pharaoh portrayed the president as overconfident and somewhat delusionally optimistic about the nation's economic outlook, but Obama was spared mockery of his many gaffes. Romney, you will recall, was mercilessly taken to task last week for the comments he made at a private fundraiser, and made to look like a out-of-touch bigot in the process (see video below, MP3 audio available here)
By Noel Sheppard | November 14, 2010 | 8:33 AM EST
As NewsBusters has been reporting all week, the media have used the occasion of George W. Bush's published memoirs "Decision Points" to rekindle their hatred for the 43rd president.
Not surprisingly, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" took its shots at Bush by uniting him with Kanye West during "Weekend Update" (video follows with transcript and commentary):