Thanks to TV Newser for getting all the details of Ben Affleck's guest-star turn as Keith Olbermann on "Saturday Night Live" last night.
The Cable Gamer thought that the skit, overall, wasn't that funny, but that Affleck totally KO'd his KO impersonation. He absolutely captured Olbermann's twitchy weirdness, the sense that underneath it all, there's more than a little bit of Norman Bates in Olbermann. You remember Norman, from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," don't you? It's a TCG fave--here's Keith, I mean, Norman. (It was Affleck-as-Olbermann's reference to his mother that really triggered the Norman comparison.)
As an aside, "Fox News Watch," which also aired last night, took up the question of what TV personality, or TV show, has had the most impact on the election. Jane Hall put in a plug for "SNL," which is certainly a reasonable proposition, given the enormous impact that the show has had over the last year, from Barack Obama's appearance last Halloween to Amy Poehler's dead-on impersonation of Hillary Clinton to, of course, Tina Fey channeling Sarah Palin.
But there are other possibilities; for example, Obama himself has said that Fox has cut two or three points off his vote total. And surely Sean Hannitygets a special mention, as the crusading pundit who broke the Reverend Wright story, among others.
But Jim Pinkerton made the best point: If, in fact, Obama ends up winning this presidential election--having been 30 points down against Hillary just a year ago, being surely about the most implausible general election candidate ever--then one has to give the "most influential" to MSNBC. That is, the combined weight of all those MSNBC propagandists, who trashed Hillary before trashing John McCain, will have had its desired effect: President Obama.
And yes, Keith Bates will get no small part of that "credit."
