tina fey — James Poling

CNN Has Officially Jumped the Shark

October 20, 2008 By James View Comments

It’s no secret that mainstream media has somehow managed to feed on its self-perpetuating 24-hour news cycle long enough to make itself almost completely irrevelant, but CNN has finally outdone itself this time.

Alina Cho, presumably one of the most mindless dolts in all of newscasterdom, does a piece on Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live and reports on it as if it’s an actual news story. When talking about Palin’s appearance on the show and the “Tina Fey Palin Effect”, Cho actually describes the bit with Alec Baldwin saying, “even Alec Baldwin…is confused”.

I’m not sure who this Alina Cho is but she sounds more like she should be hanging out on the set of The Hills rather than trying to pass herself off as a newswoman of any sort. I guess the upside is that watching this piece with Cho must give the very dumbest among us hope that someday, you too could read something this stupid on CNN.

Click here to watch the video.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alina cho, cnn, Media, sarah palin, snl, tina fey

Sarah Palin and Mark Wahlberg on SNL

October 19, 2008 By James View Comments

After watching SNL tonight I have a couple of apologies to make. To be clear, I didn’t watch the entire episode but I did watch the Palin/Wahlberg parts which were pretty much the only ones I was interested in.

First, I’d like to apoligize to Mark Wahlberg for calling him a mary. He actually managed to show up to SNL and make light of the Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals sketch, contrary to his reaction on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

Apparently he does have sense of humor and ended up doing a pretty funny, self-depricating bit with Andy Samberg. Kudos. I underestimated you Mr. Wahlberg, it shant happen again (I’m also sorry because I’m not sure if “shant” should be a contraction).

Now on to Sarah Palin. I was pretty nonplussed when I heard about Palin being on SNL tonight because I thought it was some sort of attempt to take an apologetic stance for the brilliance of Tina Fey Palin these last few weeks. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Palin’s appearance actually seemed to perpetuate Tina Fey’s portrayal of her rather than refute it.

Palin was pure vanilla on the show. She didn’t say anything other than what was on the script nor did she make any attempt to discredit any of the so called misconceptions of her. They even managed to work in Alec Baldwin making fun of Palin to her face.

Granted this was all scripted and was probably supposed to show how good a sport Palin was for taking all this in stride. But to me, it just came off the same way it would have if Britney Spears would have showed up on the show after being lambasted for the past three weeks. Which doesn’t have a very Vice Presidentially ring to it.

So my apologies to SNL, Mark Wahlberg and Sarah Palin. In one episode you managed to reaffirm my belief in the current mediocrity of SNL (aside from Tina Fey), you managed to give me a new found respect for Mark Wahlberg and you managed drive home Tina Fey’s point that Palin is a mindless dolt that is riding this wave of attention like a Paris Hilton at a nightclub. Nobody’s quite sure why she’s there, or why she’s famous or how the hell she gets all the attention but she keeps that idiotic smile and keeps saying stuff that makes even the dumbest among us feel good about themselves.

Not bad for an hour and a half episode that I fast forwarded through in 15 minutes.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: andy samberg, mark wahlberg, sarah palin, snl, television, tina fey

Sarah Palin on SNL Tonight: Smartest Move Yet by Republicans?

October 18, 2008 By James View Comments

If you haven’t yet, you may want to set your DVR to record SNL tonight as Sarah Palin is scheduled to make an appearance on the sketch comedy show. This of course follows on the heels of the spectacular success of Tina Fey’s hysterical spoofs of Palin in the first three episodes of SNL this season (you can check out the videos after the jump).

It’s no secret that although SNL is notoriously left leaning, producer Lorne Michaels is in fact a McCain supporter. One has to wonder if bringing Palin on the show is his way of sort of leveling the playing field after Fey has completely knocked it out of the park the past few weeks.

I realize that since I just started this blog a week or so ago, adding a poll to it is sort of like adding Closed Captioning to Stevie Wonder’s television but that doesn’t mean I can’t try dammit. I want to know what you think…even if it literally is only you, the one person that actually reads this blog. Please for the love of god vote.