Bush Endorsement à la SNL

[smofbabe]

Thursday night SNL Weekend Update special features an opening starring the return of Will Ferrell as Bush, all set to endorse McCain, who has to be tracked down, for the election between "the hot lady and the Tiger Woods guy." Fey appears as Palin ("a little dash of high school bitchy"). They feel obliged to spell out a Cheney bit but otherwise it's pretty funny.

I hope Lorne Michaels is willing to pay their legal fees in case Palin takes Newt Gingrich's advice and sues them:

This is a kind of deliberate, vicious, dishonest, total distortion of who Governor Palin is, including, by the way, the Saturday Night Live skits, some of which I think were slander and worthy of a lawsuit," the former Speaker of the House said. "I think the American people should realize that the elite media on the left is so desperate to elect Barack Obama that the view they're giving you of Sarah Palin is fundamentally a falsehood."

[Mind you, I don't see this actually occuring, among other things because parody is protected and because Palin's appearance on SNL is proof positive that she wasn't too upset! But it does show just how unglued Newt and some of the Republicans are getting.]

In a related story, word is out that Ferrell will be doing a solo comedy on Broadway called "You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W Bush" starting in January.

Comments

[dinogrl.livejournal.com]

Sigh.
Newt needs to read the Constitution.
Parody is protected.

[(Anonymous)]

Oddly enough you won't find the word parody in the US Constitution. However, you will find it protected by a Supreme Court ruling.

For the Reader's Digest Condensed Version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin_et_al._v._E.C._Publications,_Inc.

For more details:
http://cip.law.ucla.edu/cases/case_berlin_ec.html

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Even beyond the "parody is protected", how can you sue when most of Fey's sketches consist of direct quotes?

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Or, more to the point, when Palin actually appeared on SNL this past weekend! Makes it a bit hard to argue that she's perturbed at them.

[nkcmike.livejournal.com]

Generally, people in the limelight don't have much legal recourse if someone impugns their character -- at least that's my understanding.

And, I can't begin to express how sick I am of GOP cries of "elite media." To use one of Deb's phrases, it's "bull-pucky."