Tina Fey as Sarah Palin (and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton) satirize media sexism on SNL (also, Samantha Bee on The Daily Show)

It’s 5:00 am, but I can’t go to bed before I shared the huge grin I got from watching Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey (as Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin) and Amy Poehler (as Democratic former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) parody the topic of sexism in news coverage of the election — from the legitimate complaints of gender-based double standards in the press, such as dubious “praise” of Palin as a “MILF” or nasty swipes at Clinton’s appearance, to the ludicrous notion that any serious questioning of Palin’s experience and record is somehow sexist simply because she’s female.

The skit opens with Fey’s Palin and Poehler’s Clinton together at a joint press conference:

Palin: Tonight we are crossing party lines to address the now very ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign.

Clinton: An issue which I am frankly surprised to hear people suddenly care about.

Watch until the end, when the flip-side of the media’s “sexism” conversation gets skewered:

Palin: In the next six weeks I invite the media to be vigilant for sexist behavior.

Clinton: Although it is never sexist to question female politicians credentials. Please, ask this one about dinosaurs.

I didn’t think it was possible for me to enjoy a comedy bit about Palin more than Samantha Bee’s opening salvo on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Aug. 29th, when she described Palin as Clinton’s ideological opposite but her “gynecological twin,” and said that even though Palin stands in contrast to everything she believes in, she’d be voting for her because “we both have boobies” [Comedy Central’s embed code below is for a lengthy clip — skip to 2:52 for Samantha Bee’s segment]:

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 2:28 am and is filed under American Culture, Electoral Politics, Feminism, Political Dissent, Pop Culture, WIMN’s Executive Director’s Blog, Workplace Discrimination, Issues in the News, Humor, Body Image. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.