Wait, I think we agree … I don’t have any objection to those parts of the skit.
The parts that I thought were dumb were the holding things upside down and wandering around oblivious to the fact that he was on camera. To me, that seems more like “generic blind guy.”
SNL did a skit that wasn’t funny? Alert the press!
I’m a bad test subject too, because I only caught the skit in the middle of it and I had no idea who or what the guy was spoofing, only that seeing him standing directly in front of the camera while the people at the desk were fighting for face time and trying not to crack up … had me laughing like an idiot.
Now that I know after the fact what/who was being lampooned … I find it just as funny.
I saw it last night. I have almost no knowledge of this guy, so I was pretty clueless, but IMO the drugs etc. were funny, the blind and NJ jokes not funny. Overall it wasn’t much of an episode.
I laughed at it. But then, I’m a bad person.
I thought it was a riot. Sensitive people need to stay away from comedy. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you have no business laughing at anyone else.
Doesn’t anyone remember when SNL made a joke about Ray Charles’ blindness when he hosted the show back in the seventies?
Ray Charles whole bit in “The Blues Brothers” played off of his blindness. Including, as I recall, an upside down sign.
What’s laughing at yourself have to do with laughing at a blind guy for being blind? Unless you’re actually blind, that sounds more like laughing at somebody else. 
<—David Paterson face
The sketch was okay when they tried to do something other than “Hey, you notice the governor is a blind guy?” “Freak bag” was pretty funny, and two of the Jersey jokes were funny (I liked “a southern border” especially). So was the bit about the sex scandal he was “miraculously not part of.” When they were doing blind jokes, though, it sucked. It’s not that it was insensitive - although it IS tacky - it’s that it was just stupid. I get it, he’s blind, he can’t see. Got anything else? And the Pryor joke fell flat, probably because those revelations are old news at this point.
Also, what’s with Fred Armisen playing all the black guys? He actually did do a fair job with Paterson, but his Obama is weak.
Yeah. (Post 13.)
You guys ever seen Gov. Patterson sign a bill? He looks pretty funny doing so (can’t find a link right away, but he has to bring his face down to within about an inch of the paper). Sometimes disabilities are just funny for their own sake.
Of course, there’s a line one shouldn’t cross (depending on context and audience), and whether a parody is funny or not goes a long way towards determining how offensive it is. Haven’t seen the SNL skit, so I can’t speak to it directly.
Slightly OT, but I really hope they hire a new actor to play Obama. I don’t think Armisen is going to be able to pull it off for 4 years. Compared to Darrell Hammond’s Clinton, Will Ferrell’s W, and Dana Carvey’s GHW Bush, he looks like an amateur, though he has improved since the debates.
I think it was slightly over the line. I don’t think it was in egregiously poor taste, but it seemd slightly too much.
Though to be fair Obama’s kinda hard to imitate. You just have to be innately awesome.
I liked it a lot. Let’s face it. Patterson is a strange scenario. Had he come in and played all innocent, then there’s no way he’d have been in this sketch. However, the first order of business for Gov. Patterson was to detail his extra-marital affairs and his previous cocaine usage. It’s funny because it plays against type for blind people. How the hell do you have an affair as a blind guy? How do you dabble in illegal drugs? The fact that he’s done such things would lead you to believe he isn’t exactly innocent, and thus not deserving kid-gloves regarding his problems.
So that’s why I think it’s okay to make fun of the guy. He’s managed to become governor of NY, have multiple affairs and maintain an illegal drug habit. It’s okay to poke fun at the fact that he’s blind.
I was surprised that they showed it, but I also liked his corny ribbing of New Jersey like some kind of shitty stand-up comic. I really liked that over-emphasized delivery.
Also in the two times that he came back and was talking on the phone he had some good lines. “Fifty dollars worth of circus tickets” for example. Also, it broke up Amy Pohler’s sincere goodbye which was welcome.
I don’t think it’s cool to make fun of blind people without their consent at all, but somehow Gov. Patterson seems different to me. He’s a governor who is blind and black who wasn’t supposed to be governor and who admitted to impressive feats of debauchery upon assuming office. I think he’s lost his right to play the pity card.
I was prepared to be outraged, but I laughed. I’m immature - the big gum, small teeth line really got me. I wasn’t offended.
Er…just like anybody else.
Except that it’s unlikely that he and his mistress met in one of those “our eyes met across a crowded room” scenarios.
What’s amazing is that 30+ years ago, when SNL was a cutting-edge show instead of an institution that was older than some of its current cast members, Buck Henry played a pedopile babysitter in not one but several sketches. There was the Rosannadanna routine about Gloria Vanderbilt “having an itch in that place we can’t say on television” and Emily Litella’s rant on presidential erections (when NO other show would say that word) and Lord and Lady Douchebag being introduced at the Earl of Sandwich’s party and Anna Freud sitting on her daddy’s lap and talking about dreaming of him letting her eat bananas, etc. etc… Of course there weren’t message boards and 24/7 news networks 30 years ago, but was there much outcry over the tastelessness of the sketches?
Today there is simply no way whatsoever that Uncle Roy (the Buck Henry character) could ever be shown on TV- I don’t even know if they show him in reruns. Even the Anna Freud sketch (since Laraine Newman is playing a child) would probably be borderline, and Vanderbilt’s pubic itch would be edgier than most things on SNL today. Were people less likely to get offended then, or was there just less media to vent about it in?
I agree that a line was crossed.
However (and you knew that was coming), there’s a double standard when it comes to disabilities. If we say it’s inappropriate to make fun of the physically disabled, are we also going to cluck our tongues when people make fun of the mentally ill? Crazy people are routinely the butt of jokes. Take away crazy jokes and we ain’t got nothin’.
Dude, last week they did a whole song about jizzing in one’s pants.