Saturday Night Live

The season of Lent began Wednesday, and the folks at Saturday Night Live thought it was appropriate to usher it in with a movie trailer depicting Christ returning to Rome to exact revenge.

In the gory fashion of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Peckinpah, SNL presented to viewers on the fourth day of Lent "Djesus Uncrossed" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On a night when NBC's Saturday Night Live began with a reverential tribute to Friday's massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the writers also had a perverse fascination with female body parts.

After guest host Martin Short mentioned kissing a vagina during his opening monologue, he later played a representative from Buckingham Palace instructing an Ob/Gyn, played by Bill Hader, how to treat and refer to Kate Middleton's vagina during her pregnancy (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Jay Leno really went after Barack Obama Tuesday.

The Tonight Show host began a series of jokes about the President during his monologue with a jab at the Commander-in-Chief dodging questions about what really happened at our consulate in Benghazi last month (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

NBC’s Saturday Night Live began its program last night with a vulgarity that although bleeped was as obvious as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face.

In the opening segment spoofing Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Kate McKinnon playing ABC’s Martha Raddatz channeled Samuel L. Jackson in the movie "Pulp Fiction" telling the contestants, “Don’t try to f—k me like I’m Jim Lehrer” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Given the shellacking Barack Obama took at last week's presidential debate with Mitt Romney, one would have thought NBC's Saturday Night Live would have had no difficulty finding material to spoof the event.

Not so according to New York magazine which published a piece Monday entitled "Unlike the Rest of the World, SNL Had a Hard Time Joking About the Debate":

Having spent a considerable portion of their first episode skewering Romney last week, the folks at Saturday Night Live's special "Weekend Update Thursday" program decided to lampoon President Obama, although in doing so, the mockery wasn't as full-throated and nasty as it was against Romney, who was portrayed as a plutocratic racist.

Comedian Jay Pharaoh portrayed the president as overconfident and somewhat delusionally optimistic about the nation's economic outlook, but Obama was spared mockery of his many gaffes. Romney, you will recall, was mercilessly taken to task last week for the comments he made at a private fundraiser, and made to look like a out-of-touch bigot in the process (see video below, MP3 audio available here)

Saturday Night Live trashed Mitt Romney and gave President Obama a pass on their September 20 election special.  SNL, which is known for its unabashed liberalism, took to the air Thursday night to smear Romney as a racist politician.  In total, SNL spent over 6 minutes smearing Governor Romney but just 13 seconds gently poking fun at the president indirectly.

The show opened with a skit depicting the hosts of FNC's Fox and Friends and proceeded to show four fake scenes of Romney.  [Video below break.  MP3 audio here.] 

Appearing as a guest on Friday's The Tonight Show on NBC, former Saturday Night Live cast member Dana Carvey demonstrated the tendency of comedians to have fun with President Obama in a fashion that builds him up while poking fun at Republicans in a way that tears them down.

When asked by host Jay Leno about the presidential election, Carvey remarked that Obama is "like a Zen master of speaking" before mocking Mitt Romney's speaking ability:

Rock legend Mick Jagger waded into presidential politics on NBC's Saturday Night Live this weekend singing a piece called "Tea Party."

The only candidate specifically mentioned by Jagger was Mitt Romney who he warned viewers, "Don't ever let him cut your hair" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, vulgarity warning):

Talking to Meet the Press host David Gregory on the NBC Sunday show's web-based feature Press Pass, Saturday Night Live cast member and Obama impersonator Fred Armisen confessed: "I've grown to like him more and more. You know, I was always – I've just been a fan of his, if you could say that about a president. So that's the other kind of good part of it, is you know, getting to like him more and more."

By contrast, fellow cast member Jason Sudeikis told Gregory he wished he could impersonate someone more exciting than Mitt Romney: "I'd prefer that he did something scandalous or something and, you know, incredibly stupid, as opposed to just boring....I mean, he's like a butter sandwich with unsalted butter and the crust cut off."

Greg Gutfeld on Monday attacked comics for not making jokes about the current White House resident.

Appearing on Fox News's The Five, Gutfeld said, "Asking a comedian to make fun of Obama is like asking a priest to mock Christ" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

As NewsBusters reported last week, now that Mitt Romney appears set to win the Republican presidential nomination, Saturday Night Live is going to do its darnedest to trash him every week through Election Day.

This pattern continued Saturday as for the second week in a row the program began with a segment attacking the former Massachusetts governor while also taking shots at all the other candidates including a disgusting homosexual reference to Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus (transcribed lowlights and commentary follow, video for those that can stand it available at Mediaite):

It wasn't only the press that completely misunderstood and therefore misrepresented Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's claim this week that he likes being able to fire people.

NBC's Saturday Night Live actually began Saturday's show with a sketch depicting the former Massachusetts governor trying to fire everything - including the food! - at a South Carolina diner (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Like many Americans, actor Alec Baldwin took to his Twitter account Wednesday evening to express his feelings about the execution of Georgia cop killer Troy Davis.

Rather strangely, the objects of his derision included former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and conservative author Michelle Malkin:

Someone at Fox News has some serious 'splaining to do.

During a Sunday segment about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's interview with Chris Wallace earlier in the day, a picture of Tina Fey impersonating her nemesis was accidentally placed in the upper-right corner of the screen:

"Saturday Night Live's" Seth Meyers headlined Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, and somewhat surprisingly went after media outlets on both sides of the aisle.

Apart from jibes at Fox News, the New York Times, and NPR, Meyers said of MSNBC's event after party, "President Obama makes the Kool-Aid, and everyone there drinks it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"Saturday Night Live" began its program last evening with Fred Armisen once again addressing the nation as President Obama.

After being literally held hostage by Republicans for three days - "bound, gagged, blindfolded in a dark room somewhere outside Washington" - Obama, in the grips of weird symptoms associated with the Stockholm Syndrome, became a tax cut-loving, Sarah Palin-admiring, Rush Limbaugh-quoting conservative who's no longer sure he was born in America (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting all week, the media have used the occasion of George W. Bush's published memoirs "Decision Points" to rekindle their hatred for the 43rd president.

Not surprisingly, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" took its shots at Bush by uniting him with Kanye West during "Weekend Update" (video follows with transcript and commentary):