Last week "Saturday Night Live” replaced its opening sketch which made fun of President Barack Obama’s boastful Osama bin Laden speech with one about “Fox & Friends," prompting The New York Post to investigate claims that SNL is going easy on Obama.
The skit, used in dress rehearsal but cut for the live show, was later posted on the Internet and, according to the New York Post, it resulted in a massive online political debate over whether the NBC long-running live comedy show is taking a dive for Obama.
Fred Armisen, playing Obama, said “This is a special time of year, when we gather together with family and friends to commemorate the shooting of this terrorist, and the gutsy decision that made it possible. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be at home this year, as I had to fly to Afghanistan, to remind President Karzai that, exactly one year ago, we killed Osama bin Laden and that the decision to do so was a gutsy one — and was mine.”
Yesterday, the National Review Online questioned whether SNL “feels a liberal taboo against mocking Obama in an election year." And that, “any thought that SNL is an equal-opportunity political slasher is fast becoming, well, a joke.”
Lorne Michaels told The Post “Obviously, I thought it was funny or I wouldn’t have led dress [rehearsal] with it. But we were 27 minutes long,” and something had to be cut. He insisted “It wasn’t politics, it was about the comedy."
Michaels went on to tell the New York Post, “The show’s many things, but partisan it is not.”
Jim Downey, who has been at Saturday Night Live for years and who authored the piece does not believe it was cut for political reasons, telling the website Mediate, “They just preferred the other piece.”
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