During the recent vice presidential debate Vice President Joe Biden or as he referred to himself "Big Daddy Joe," called the GOP vice presidential candidate "shark eyes." But don't worry Paul Ryan had Olympic medalist Usain Bolt in his corner.
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I love following politics. But I just don't follow the candidates. I also follow the parody caricatures who make regular appearances on one of my favorite shows — "Saturday Night Live."
During a presidential year SNL viewers are treated to a variety of appearances. Some argue that the sketch comedy show can influence voters who have not yet decided who will get their vote.
As Seth Meyers would say, "Really!?!"
The comedy show takes political events and figures and exaggerate events that happened. Quite honestly I wonder how anyone would get the jokes if they were not closely following the races.
I really don't know if "Ann Romney" thinks that President Barack Obama and Michelle are more elitist than she and Mitt because "they're friends with Jay-Z and Beyonce." But seeing "Mitt Romney" sing "Old McDonald" to a group of supporters or "Obama" himself saying that turning this economy around may take more than eight years does not change my opinion of who I think should be the president of the United States.
What SNL does is takes away the intensity of a campaign and allows us to laugh. With all of the news coverage and campaign ads voters are bombarded with campaign rhetoric. I think it would be hard to really avoid any news coverage of the race, which I would hope gives accurate accounts of the candidates stances on the issues facing our nation.
They are pretty fair across the board making sure everyone is a target of their skits. Yes, the sitting president is the target between election years, but as the sitting president you are pretty much fair game.
If someone is using SNL as their only way to gather information about the candidates, then the joke is on them.
But who knows, maybe small children do cry when Ryan looks directly into the camera.
(Michelle Ganassi is the assistant city editor, political reporter and jokester for the Daily American. She can be reached at michelleg@dailyamerican.com.)
