Last week, the nation watched President Barack Obama get his clocked cleaned by GOP challenger Mitt Romney in the first of three presidential debates. The writers at “Saturday Night Live,” who live to protect Obama’s reelection chances, struggled to find anything funny about the one-sided debate.
[The New York Times] reports that mining the debates for comedy was surprisingly difficult, and the sketch was nearly cut at the last minute. “It’s boring enough when they’re talking about all this and how it will affect Americans, but when you’re sitting there trying to pull comedy out of it, it’s really bad,” Seth Meyers said. “There were people on Twitter saying: ‘You must be really happy, there’s so much in this debate. This is writing itself.’ I was like: what debate are you watching?”
The one where a distracted, depleted Obama got his clock cleaned, Mr. Funny Man. But when you’re in the tank for one candidate, and said candidate gets crushed, it’s hard to see the funny underneath.
“Saturday Night Live” actually wrote up a sketch about the debate for last Saturday’s telecast, one showing Obama in a less than flattering light. But the Times says the sketch almost got cut.
The biggest political comedy show around nearly cut a sketch about the biggest political news of the week – if not the month.
Amazing.
Then again, there is precedent for such a snip. Last year, “SNL” wrote up a scathing piece on Obama spiking the football over the death of Osama bin Laden. That bit didn’t make it to the air.
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