'SNL' creator Lorne Michaels provides the scoop on Sarah Palin's cameo
Two weeks before any vote results are known, some clear winners already have emerged in this year's presidential campaign. These include television and radio stations in states where Barack Obama is using his unprecedented contribution totals to wage a massive ad campaign.
And then there's Lorne Michaels, the Canadian-born mastermind of "Saturday Night Live" who has seen the out-of-nowhere Sarah Palin-Tina Fey nexus cause ratings for the program to soar.
Michaels goes into chapter-and-verse on how Palin's appearance on the show last Saturday came to be in a just-released Q & A with Entertainment Weekly.
In case there was any doubt, he confirms that the set-up to Amy Poehler's Palin-inspired rap, in which the candidate said she's decided to bail on performing it (but then rocked out as Poehler took the mike), "was all part of the act."
Adds Michaels: "We didn't ask her to rap. The idea was, what is the worst possible thing we could ask her to do? ..."
He also displays an evasive quality worthy of the best politician.
Asked about any Palin-Fey interaction, Michaels said, "They talked. You'd have to ask them how it went. There was no kicking and screaming. We know how to behave."
And asked about possible candidate appearances on the two "SNLs" before election day, he replied, "Yes, but ... until they're in the building, I'm not going to talk about it."
-- Don Frederick
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Sarah Palin has done wonders for SNL's ratings. Thanks to Fey's Palin parodies, SNL has enjoyed a sizeable boost in the number of people watching the show.
If you want to see every single Palin parody, you can go to the Dailysource's special page on Paiin, at dailysource.org/palinvideos. Our special page has over a hundred videos that focus on Palin.
Posted by: rpyon21 | October 21, 2008 at 05:24 PM
Saturday Night Live offers a much needed dose of humor in these dour political and economical times. Irreverent? Of course! But any celebrity or politician that can allow themseves to be roasted on national TV and then laugh about it deserves their fame and fortune. I'd like to see some leaders of developing nations (such as China) inject this kind of show into their programming. Maybe then the world would be a nicer place...
Posted by: China | October 21, 2008 at 05:36 PM
I can't believe some people actually thought that Palin was being sincere when she said she "couldn't go through with it" in the skit. Duh! It's SNL, people!
Posted by: Mark | October 21, 2008 at 06:55 PM
Palin did a good job of making light of SNL's portrayals of her. A good place to see all of the videos of SNL's Palin skits is at http://dailysource.org/palinvideos . They have a comprehensive collection of video footage of Sarah Palin there, including interviews, speeches and archival footage.
Posted by: independent99 | October 21, 2008 at 10:10 PM
Defamer confirms today that Obama is scheduled to appear on SNL on Nov. 1, and that it could have something to do with Lorne Michaels donating $4600 to his campaign:
http://defamer.com/5066700/barack-obama-fetches-4600-for-90-minutes-of-ecstasy-with-lorne-michaels
If you follow their sources, it seems to have been linked to a Palin aide who overheard a drunk Seth Meyers talking at the afterparty on Sat. night.
Posted by: barnyard | October 21, 2008 at 11:35 PM