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Saturday Night Live -- More Kudos!

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 12/20/2004 9:44:15 AM

On December 18, 2004, Saturday Night Live aired a "TV Fun House" cartoon by Robert Smigel.  This one was a stop-action animation featuring Santa, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and -- Al Franken, Margaret Cho, Moby and Natalie Merchant.  Santa decided to refuse to delivery anything, even coal, to the "Red States" who voted for George W. Bush.  He called the Red States "Dumbf***istan" and said such horrible lib-jokes like "trailers don’t have chimneys" and a sick joke about "Tickle Me Elmo" and red-state fathers-daughter relationships.  Then there was a segway to Rush Limbaugh, planning to substitute as Santa for the red states, only to find him in an Oxycontin-induced stupor on the floor of his restroom.

Now it may sound as if this was the worst of the worst in terms of the liberal bigotry.  And it was.  But Rudolph was P.O.’d st Santa, who left the Chinese Restaurant where he went to party with Franken and the gang, and took them on the sleigh to the rest of the blue states.  In one house a girl was awakened, and Santa explained that he would not deliver to the "yahoos" in the Red States, while Natalie Merchant said, almost sickened, "They believe in God!"  Another called the Red State people bigots.  Now crying, the Blue State girl told Santa and the libs off, and said that they were the bigots!  Santa then apologized and delivered presents to the red states, consisting of CD’s from Cho and The Best of the O’Franken Factor.  At the end of the cartoon, the liberal New York Audience was unsurprisingly muted in its applause.

"Earlier, I complimented SNL for their evenhandedness in their political satire this season.  This Smigel cartoon, when viewed from front to end, deserves even more compliments."

Earlier, I complimented SNL for their evenhandedness in their political satire this season.  This Smigel cartoon, when viewed from front to end, deserves even more compliments.  I had previously assumed that Saturday Night Live carried a liberal bias, since so many TV shows are heavily liberal and conservative-bashing.  Smigel, whose political affiliations are not known to me, roundly lambasted the ribald bigotry of elite socialist liberalism as it is embodied in the present climate.  Good for Mr. Smigel!

Aside from the Rush Limbaugh smackdown, the entire cartoon was perhaps a tad conservative!  Smigel condemned bigotry against people of faith and bigotry based on political affiliation.  He did that with flair and while making us laugh hard.  This man is known for his more rowdy adventures, such as The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The X-Presidents.  His cartoon of the McCain endorsement of our President was shockingly funny.

Mark my words:  liberals, probably starting with SNL veteran Franken, will roast Smigel.  Generally, liberals are too thin-skinned to take a joke as a joke, or to get it when someone tries to teach them an important lesson.  They will look at Smigel as a traitor, a bigot, and as an attacker.  Why?  He pointed out a liberal foible.  Elite leftists think that they are smart and all others are stupid; they regard others as always wrong and themselves as always right; they regard themselves as morally superior and all others primitive.  This is the ultimate danger of the left-wing doctrine.  The mindset is the natural child of the superioristic paternalism that underpins their erroneous ideology.

I applaud Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel.  They richly deserve all of our applause.