Tina Fey

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:

NBC's Tina Fey guest-hosted "Saturday Night Live" last evening, and viewers could hardly be surprised her network took the opportunity to once again use her to bash former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

In a mock Republican presidential candidates debate, before depicting Palin as an idiot that doesn't fully understand English, Fey did manage to take a humorous swipe at the soon to be exiting CBS "Evening News" host saying, "I want to acknowledge that this week we finally vanquished one of the world's great villains, and I for one am thrilled to say good riddance to Katie Couric" (video follows with partial transcript):

In the midst of Republicans insisting on defunding NPR, the network thumbed its nose at the GOP again on Tuesday night's All Things Considered newscast by having a book review offered by hard-left "comedian" and failed radio host Janeane Garofalo. The book she reviewed was Tina Fey's new memoir, titled Bossypants. Garofalo spent most of the review in a rut of self-pity, but this political passage popped out:

Another area of interest to me was Tina's discussion of what happened when she impersonated Sarah Palin on "SNL" and became a target of ill-founded wrath. Regrettably, it's always been easy to marshal cultural hostility toward women, especially in politics, where double standards and misogyny tend to dominate the conversation. Those are my words, not Tina's.

Was Tina Fey the victim of cultural hostility toward women? Or was she the one dishing it out?

CNN would like to portray itself as the serious, no-gimmicks news network. So why would Anderson Cooper feel the need to copycat Keith Olbermann and come up with a editorializing feature called the "Ridicu-List"? On Tuesday night, he called out PBS for editing out Tina Fey's less-than-classy jokes about conservative women being great for women, unless you need a rape kit, or are lesbian, or believe in evolution. Cooper obviously believes in taxpayer-funded conservative-bashing:

COOPER: So we started a new segment on the program this week, a nightly effort to point out hypocrisy, double talk, stuff that just is downright ridiculous. We call it the RidicuList. So who's on the list tonight? Well, it's the TV network PBS for their claims about why they edited Tina Fey.

CNN's Dana Bash asked a great question on Tuesday: were Tina Fey's disgusting remarks about conservative women at the Mark Twain Awards "the first time that PBS has been accused of editing to favor Republicans?"

Almost as telling, CNN's Gloria Borger appearing with Bash on "John King USA" answered, "They edited out something Paul McCartney said that was offensive at one point to Republicans, so probably not" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Upon receiving the Kennedy Center's Mark Train Prize for American Humor on November 9, comedian Tina Fey trashed Sarah Palin in her acceptance speech.

By the time PBS broadcast the taped ceremony, the taxpayer-subsidized network had edited out some of Fey's harsher jokes that maligned the former Alaska governor.

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell appeared in studio on today's "Fox & Friends" to address the controversy, lauding PBS for doing the right thing by making those edits.

[Video follows after page break]

Paul Farhi in The Washington Post reported that comedian Tina Fey received “a little political airbrushing” from PBS on Sunday night when it aired her receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Center. These mean anti-conservative jokes were left on the editing floor:

"And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women [applause before the joke kicks in] -- except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape kit and stuff," Fey said. "But for everybody else, it's a win-win -- Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us -- unless you believe in evolution. You know -- actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."

Comedienne and actress Tina Fey on Tuesday thanked former Alaska governor Sarah Palin as she accepted this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

According to the Washington Post, she then mocked conservative women "first to nervous laughter and then to not much laughter at all":

Want to see what sort of rationalizations the scary anti-conservative elements of the media use to justify why they hold any opponents of President Barack Obama’s policies in contempt?

Check out the treatise on the state of “white America” from the Village Voice’s Steven Thrasher. In a long-winded Sep. 29 piece full of invective, Thrasher contends that the “white brain, beset with worries, finally goes haywire in spectacular fashion.” Why? He insisted it was because of the election of Obama and a realization “white America” had lost grasp of the control power in the United States. (h/t @DLoesch)

“About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel,” Thrasher wrote. “It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).”

Tina Fey hosted NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last evening, and as expected, reprised her role as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Dressed in black leather, Fey began by going after Tea Party members referring to them as "protesters dressed like Paul Revere who are so overweight they picket from folding chairs."

Next, Fey introduced the "Sarah Palin Network," which will feature hit movies like, "My Daughter Only Sprained Her Ankle, You Can't Seriously Be Considering Euthanizing Her."

"But not all our programming is fear-based," she said before highlighting SPN's lineup of shows like "Tea Party Wheel of Fortune," "Are You Smarter than a Half-Term Governor?" and "Hey Journalist, I Gotcha," in which Palin re-edited interviews to make it look like her interviewers - Katie Couric for example - were "woefully unprepared" (video follows):

Having been regularly lampooned by the folks at "Saturday Night Live," Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin now want to co-host the weekly comedy program.

On Wednesday's installment of "Glenn Beck," the host pitched the idea: "It will be a very highly rated show I'm guessing. We'll make fun of us and give you guys the time off, where you don't have to make fun of us and we'll co-host the show."

Moments later, Beck asked the former Alaska Governor if being mocked by Tina Fey bothered her.

Palin responded, "Well, the only scary thing about all that is that people did start mixing that parody with those things that I actually have said in interviews and some of the reality started kind of atrophying into whatever she was saying. So that was the scary thing that some people weren't intelligent enough to know what the difference was" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Where is Tina Fey now that we need her?

Martha Coakley is the front-runner for the Dem nomination for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In a recent debate, asked about her lack of foreign policy experience, the first credential Coakley offered in response was that "I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East."

Stop the presses! 

A member of the mainstream media actually said something nice about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

I kid you not: "Saturday Night Live" senior producer Marci Klein said during an interview last week, "This is the most confident person I've ever met."

Certainly not the impression created by CBS's Katie Couric or ABC's Charlie Gibson, wouldn't you agree?

Appearing on Julie Menin's "Give and Take," Klein had absolutely nothing but nice things to say about the press's current public enemy #1 (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 2:25):

The Internet is abuzz Monday morning over the excessive vulgarity at Sunday's Golden Globes.

From middle-fingers to testicular and homosexual references, Hollywood's annual lovefest was almost as bad as accidentally entering the comments section at a liberal blog.

Almost.

As the Los Angeles Times' Rachel Abramowitz reported, the lowlight was Mickey Rourke who gave one of the "most profane acceptance speeches in recent history" (video embedded below the fold, obvious vulgarity alert, photo courtesy AP):

Update 11-25 8:20 AM: Morning Joe Makes SNL References -- see discussion at foot.

Call it "The Wild 'n Crazy Guy–Billionaire Style."  Maria Bartiromo's interview of Saudi Prince Alwaleed, the largest shareholder of Citigroup, is literally a Saturday Night Live skit waiting—begging—to happen.

CNBC's Bartiromo conducted the interview by remote this afternoon. When the camera went to the prince in Riyadh, you might have expected to find him in a TV studio, or perhaps in his business office, maybe even in one of his palace rooms.  But no, there he was sitting outdoors, apparently by his stables, with seated camels and sleek horses very visible in the background.   And rather than being attired in business or traditional Saudi dress, the Prince was duded up with an open collar, tinted glasses and a scarf warding off the desert's cool night air.  He could be seen occasionally fingering what appeared to be golden worry beads.

View video here.

McCain returned to offer some new, last-minute campaign strategies on "Weekend Update" (video embedded below the fold):

In a just released study, "A Study in Character Assassination: How the TV Networks Have Portrayed Sarah Palin as Dunce or Demon," CMI analysts found that ABC, CBS and NBC are airing 18 negative stories for every one positive story on Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

Is it any wonder that polls revealed a 17 percent increase in Palin's unfavorability ratings in just one month? 

After examining the TV news coverage of Palin from September 29 to October 12, CMI found that ABC, NBC and CBS news shows ran 69 stories about Palin.  2 stories were positive, 37 were negative and 30 were neutral.  The 2 positive stories were a two-part interview with Palin's parents on the CBS Early Show.  Not one of the major network evening news programs - ABC's World News, NBC's Nightly News, and CBS's Evening News - ran a single positive story about Palin.

ABC was hardest on Palin, as 60 percent of its stories on Palin were negative.  NBC came in second, as 54 percent of its stories were negative.  CBS also ran 54 percent negative stories, but also ran the only two positive stories (8 percent). 

CMI found that the networks promoted three major narratives about Palin:

The Obama-loving media might hate Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, but according to preliminary estimates, the Alaska governor's guest appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" gave the program its highest ratings in over fourteen years.

This seems to go hand in hand with the great reception Palin got Saturday evening from the audience in attendance for the live broadcast who enthusiastically applauded as she walked onto the stage during the program's opening sketch.

Maybe even more surprising, they weren't the only typically liberal New Yorkers enthralled with the Alaska governor, for the New York Times' television critic actually gave Palin a very solid review.

But before we get there, here's what Reuters reported moments ago (emphasis added):

Sarah Palin [left] and Tina Fey cross paths on the set of Saturday Night Live, October 18, 2008.

Video of Palin's second appearance -- on the "Weekend Update" segment -- follows below the fold:

UPDATE: YouTube link to deleted video at end of post.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in its most recent installment did an extraordinary skit which amongst other things accurately blamed Democrats for the current financial crisis.

Early Sunday morning, as is customary for NBC, the video of this sketch was posted at its website. Some time Monday, it was taken down without any explanation.

One possibility is that two of the targets in the skit, the founders of Golden West Financial who were mocked by "SNL" as having made billions selling subprime mortgages to unqualified borrowers, aren't happy with how they were portrayed. As reported by the Associated Press (emphasis added):

Between 6 a.m. and 12 noon on Monday, MSNBC featured six segments which replayed bits from Tina Fey's Saturday Night Live parody of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's performance in Thursday's debate. The SNL parody of Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was only played twice, and both times were during Morning Joe.

This continues a trend that was also seen last Monday morning when MSNBC replayed Tina Fey's parody of Palin's interview with Katie Couric seven times while avoiding Saturday Night Live's parody of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Along with the free airtime given to Fey's impersonation of Palin came some commentary by the various hosts of both Morning Joe and MSNBC News Live. First, Willie Geist commented that, "Sometimes you watch [Tina Fey] and forget what Sarah Palin actually looks like. She's so dead on."

It was certainly no surprise that NBC's "Saturday Night Live," in its most recent installment, lampooned Thursday's vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

However, despite doing a nice job of mocking Biden and host Gwen Ifill -- masterfully played by guest Queen Latifah -- the butt of most of the jokes was cleary Palin who was once again portrayed by Tina Fey (video embedded below the fold, photo courtesy Huffington Post):

CNN world affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria, in a column published in the October 6 issue of Newsweek, condescended towards Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, labeled her "utterly unqualified to be vice president," and complimented Katie Couric for her "smart question" to the Alaska governor in a recent interview. He later asserted clairvoyantly that "she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start."

As a result of this slam, CNN host Wolf Blitzer interviewed Zakaria on Monday’s The Situation Room, in which the analyst referenced Tina Fey’s nearly word-for-word quotation of Palin from the Couric interview on last Saturday’s SNL program, which was played earlier in the program: "The scary answer was on the economy -- the one you displayed switching back and forth between Saturday Night Live, because it was absolutely clear, that she simply did not understand any of the issues involved. She did not understand the question."

With the vice presidential debate only a few days away, MSNBC gave a lot of attention on Monday to what Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin are doing to prepare for their one and only debate. Along with this, MSNBC also gave a lot of airtime to Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" parody of Palin's interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, showing clips of the skit seven times between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon. However, only Morning Joe featured "Saturday Night Live's" parody of Senator Barack Obama, and even then the focus was on the portion of the skit which parodied Senator John McCain's "gimmicks."

Of the seven times that MSNBC showed clips from Tina Fey's Palin impersonation, many of them lead into discussion about Palin's lack of foreign policy expertise and comments about how Fey's impersonation could lead to negative effects for McCain's campaign.

On Monday's "Today" show, NBC's Andrea Mitchell loved Tina Fey's parodying of Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," so much that she played a clip the "30 Rock" star mocking Palin's inexperience, while simultaneously airing an actual clip of Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric, as Mitchell charged: "the reviews have been withering for her interview with Katie Couric, only her third since nominated."

However Mitchell didn't bother to air clips from "SNL" that mocked the Democratic side, most notably one that made fun of Barack Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko.

For years, NewsBusters has not only pointed out liberal bias in traditional media outlets, but also when it occurs in sports coverage.

In a fine example of why this is so important, ABC sportscaster Suzy Shuster on Tuesday published a letter at the Huffington Post begging actress Tina Fey to make weekly appearances as Gov. Sarah Palin on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in order to get Barack Obama elected president.

I kid you not.

Here are some of the lowlights of this disgraceful piece (emphasis added, photo courtesy Boston Herald):

Decimate: 1. to destroy a great number or proportion of: the population was decimated by a plague. 2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.

Is that the definition of the post-partisan politics Barack Obama claims to be preaching?  You know, the kind where there's no blue-state America or red-state America: just the United States of America?  Maybe Chevy Chase didn't get the email.  Appearing on Morning Joe today, Chase expressed his disappointment that Tina Fey didn't go after Sarah Palin harder in her SNL impersonation.  Chase wanted to see Fey "decimate" the Republican VP candidate.

Chase was appearing to tout a charity auction he and wife Jayni are conducting to fund environmental education in the schools.  See Bonus Coverage for a disturbing factoid Jayni let slip. Chase's call for blood came in response to Willie Geist's very first question.

View video here.