Letters to the Editor
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SNL may not be biased, but those sketches certainly were
A few points...
Alex Koppelman: "Who knew people still watched any part of the show other than "Dick in a Box"?"
Thanks, now I gotta go find out what "Dick in a Box" is about. Anyway, even if people don't watch the show, SNL's sketches got considerable news coverage. They were on YouTube for a while, and on the NBC.com web site. There was plenty of word-of-mouth and blogging, and Clinton made them a part of her debate conversation. It wasn't just one episode, it was two weeks' worth, both slanted heavily toward Hillary Clinton, and both just before an important election.
Lorne Michaels: "I'm sensitive to the suggestion that we're in the service of Hillary Clinton this year. That obviously is not the case ... We don't lay down for anybody ... I'm in show business and I never, ever forget that."
Saying he's sensitive to the suggestion doesn't mean there isn't a bias. Saying that it "obviously" is not the case, without mentioning what's so obvious about it, is not convincing either.
Alex Koppelman: "Turns out that, actually, most of the "SNL" staff are Obama supporters, and head writer Seth Meyers has contributed to Obama's campaign. As for Michaels, well, he actually contributed to John McCain and Chris Dodd."
But what about Jim Downey, whom you mentioned earlier, and who wrote the politically themed sketches? What about Amy Poehler, and most importantly, what about guest Tina Fey, whose "bitch is the new black" piece was practically an editorial endorsement?
All of this side-steps a few other issues:
(1) For two weeks in a row, SNL prominently opened its show with a satire of the Clinton/Obama debates that made Obama look stupid for no particular reason. The point was that the media was going soft on him, but by the second debate there seemed to be an effort (by Tim Russert) to challenge Obama -- for example with Russert's repeated questions on the Farrakhan support. So by then SNL's one-joke premise was rendered inaccurate, but they forged ahead with it anyway.
(2) SNL gave Hillary Clinton a prominent appearance, with advance publicity, just three days before a major election. Though not an endorsement, the appearance occurred directly after a sketch that portrayed Obama in a much more unflattering way than it portrayed Clinton.
SNL doesn't have to apologize for any of this, and they'll move on to other things. I don't consider it worth making a big deal over. That said, I think Obama supporters who do cry foul are not just imagining things.