Mediaite Presents: 35 Great SNL News Spoofs

VIDEO

by Robert Quigley | 10:40 am, September 24th, 2009

» 10 comments

Emily Litella: “Never Mind”
Cable anchors are easy enough to spoof, but it takes talent to go after editorialists. Here’s the schtick: Gilda Radner’s grannyish Emily Litella writes a fiery column when she mishears something, but becomes a sweet old lady again when she’s corrected. “Why don’t parents want their children to see violins on television? Well, I thought the Leonard Bernstein concerts were just lovely.” “Oh, never mind.”

The O’Reilly Factless:
Besides occasionally matching O’Reilly’s intonation, Darrell Hammond’s take on Bill O is actually a bit of a miss as far as impressions go, but the overall gag — of a show completely devoid of facts — bears a painful resemblance to the Fox show at its worst. Plus, the idea that the same man plays both Bill Clinton and Bill O’Reilly on SNL is a cosmic joke of its own.

1990 Chris Rock and the Black Vice President

Special correspondent 1990 Chris Rock riffs on why there will never be a black vice president in this strange time capsule of a skit. It involves making people want to murder the president. Yikes.

Ann Coulter on “Weekend Update:”
Michaela Watkins pulls off an appropriately icy and self-satisfied Ann Coulter, defending the Bush administration’s legacy and “Christian-y” policies against all of the liberal media — mere mortals in Coulter’s eyes.

Queen Latifah Is Not Biased
SNL has been accused of being “in the tank” for Obama during the 2008 election, but Queen Latifah’s book-hawking Gwynne Ifill was an awesome touch to what could have been just another Tina Fey/Sarah Palin bit. “I will not ask any follow-up questions beyond ‘do you agree?’ or ‘your response?’ so as not to appear biased for Barack Obama in light of my new book ‘The Breakthrough: Politics of Race in the Age of Obama,’ coming out on Inauguration Day and available for preorder on Amazon.com.”

For the grand finale: Oprah’s favorite things, and a certain Alaskan governor gets interviewed

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Andy Richter, Ann Coulter, Anna Nicole Smith, Arianna Huffington, barack obama, Ben Affleck, Bill Hader, Bill O'Reilly, Brian Fellow, Brian Williams, Casey Wilson, Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Dan Aykroyd, Dana Carvey, David Paterson, Don Ohlmeyer, Emily Litella, Fred Armisen, Geraldo Rivera, Gilda Radner, Gwynne Ifill, Hoda Kotb, Horatio Sanz, James Lipton, Jane Curtin, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, Joe Biden, John Belushi, John McCain, Joy Behar, Kathy Lee GIfford, Katie Couric, Keith Morrison, keith olbermann, Kristen Wiig, larry king, Maya Rudolph, Michael Jackson, Michaela Watkins, Nancy Grace, Norm Macdonald, O.J. Simpson, Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah, Rachael Ray, Rachel Maddow, Richard Nixon, Richard Pryor, Rob Blagojevich, Roland Burris, Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Suze Orman, Tina Fey, Tom Brokaw, Tracey Morgan, Walter Reed, Will Ferrell, Wolf Blitzer

Magister

This looks like a good collection with lots of entertainment potential, but it might be better titled “35 Great SNL Spoofs Available Online” because just off the top of my head, Gilda’s “Emily Litella”; The “Al Franken Decade’”; Al Franken as one-person, self-contained reporting unit and Weekend Update’s memorable Three Mile Island coverage are overlooked.

Still, a good post with lots of entertainment value. It’s just that if you’ve watched SNL for thirty-five years, you can think of things better than some of those listed above.
Magister

Oh, and let me add A. Whitney Brown’s “The Big Picture” to my little list.
Robert Quigley

@Magister: Emily Litella’s there, just on page six! Had to give some incentive to keep reading…

Good calls on Three Mile Island and A. Whitney Brown though. I also looked everywhere for John Belushi’s weatherman skit, but to no avail.
MarkEdwards

Completely.

Freaking.

Brilliant.

Thanxxxxxxxxxxxx for the laughs!
http://the-w.com/ CRZ

Sorry, I’m too lazy to read more than one page.

Were you worried you were going to run out of Internet if you didn’t break it up into seven pages? I hate when websites do that. SHAME!
Magister

@Robert Quigley: Sorry about that. I must’ve inadvertently skipped page six, but thanks for pointing it out because not only do you have her, but you also have a couple of really good ones on that page.

Good post.
http://www.twitter.com/kgotkin Kevin Gotkin

This is such a great piece! But I must be annoying and write a totally distracting comment: each and every one of the videos won’t load because of “international copyright restrictions” (I’m in France)! Imagine me all ready to laugh and giggle to myself here in Paris and suddenly I’m robbed (of course, your words are almost as good, Mr. Quigley!). Seroiusly, WTF.
Robert Quigley

@Kevin: Drat! ‘Hulu?’ More like, ‘vermoulu.’
http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-Guzman/776054874 Aaron Guzman

I am truly shocked that there was not a single mention of the “Assassination of Buckwheat.” No, honestly, I am shocked. For those too young to have seen it, when Eddie Murphy was on SNL during the early 80′s one of his recurring characters was an adult version of the Little Rascals’ ‘Buckwheat.’ During one episode, everything started normally but about 10 minutes into the show Weekend Update broke in with a special report about Buckwheat being shot while leaving a theater after a performance. The rest of the entire episode was a parody of the news reporting on the tragedy reminiscent of the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, including constantly replaying the footage of Buckwheat being shot (in slow motion), corporate sponsorships of the special report (“The Death of Buckwheat: brought to you by …”) and the assassin’s high school yearbook photo where he was voted “Most Likely to Kill Buckwheat.” An article about the greatest SNL news parodies that lacks this masterpiece is an article written by someone who didn’t do much research on the subject.
jennielynsan

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