Sarah Palin and SNL

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sarah-palin-and-hillary-clinton-address-the-nation/n12287

            So for this Blog I chose to write about Sarah Palin’s SNL representation by Tina Fey. This was a running sketch by the writers of SNL and this particular one included Hilary Clinton played by Amy Poehler as well. Palin however was portrayed as an idiot who doesn’t understand what’s happening. One of the first things you might realize is when Palin states that she was so excited to be a part of the address and glad she got to do it with Clinton. Then directly following Clinton said she was told that she was doing it alone and didn’t know about Palin. This just resonates the idea that no one wants to work with Palin assumedly because she is “unintelligent.” Then around a minute in Clinton states that she believes diplomacy is the most important part of foreign policy to which Palin’s portrayal replies with “Well I can see Russia from my house” Ultimately this is poking fun that Palin is from Alaska. I remember when this happened and from what we discussed in class a lot of people actually believed that she said that she could see Russia from her house even though that was never said. It is just continuing to build this idea that she is unintelligent and doesn’t understand what foreign policy is and she believes just because she can see a foreign country means that she will know about that policy. She also said that they came over all the time and they just “shooed them back over” when actuality she never talked about this topic at all. Even though this is all in jest there would be some uneducated voters who don’t understand the difference between satire and actuality who would change this. So even though Palin was actually trying to come off as an educated and worthy VP candidate she was being portrayed as an unintelligent idiot.

            This had a lot of things to do with why people believe she isn’t smart… However Palin allowed things and jokes to be made about her when she winked 4-5 times in her debate to come across as easier to talk to. But this also allowed Saturday Night live to poke more fun at her and it fueled the fire. So I personally believe that this very falsely shaped the view of Palin in the public opinion. While most people understand that it is Satire it is still hard to fight satire with being serious and that is one of the problems that the McCain and Palin campaign had to deal with.