Alan Gutierrez

I am a Democrat. I am a supporter of Barack Obama. I want Barack Obama to win the election and become President of the United States.

Which is why I’m so happy to see Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. When I watched the clip above, I was able to laugh out loud at Sarah Palin for the first time. Much needed.

It was a fun and clever satire of the accusations of sexism that have been bandied about in the two weeks since Sarah Palin’s debut.

What I like most of all about the SNL skit is that it completely deflated Sarah Palin. For two weeks, Sarah Palin, marched forward with a message of wide-eyed denial about every aspect of her record, defended by a phalanx of operatives who labeled all inquiries into her abilities as sexist. As it seemed that she would get away with, there were the early stages of Bush Derangement Syndrome setting in among the Democratic faithful, a condition that is often fatal for Democratic political campaigns.

The skit deflates Sarah Palin, with nuance. Amy Poler as Hillary Clinton says, “you just glided in on a dog sled, wearing your pageant sash and your Tina Fey glasses”, and there it is. Sarah Palin seems suddenly unoriginal. Indeed, so much has been made of her celebrity resemblances. Her own supporters fawning over her beauty. The celebrity that she resembles is now going to use the likeness in satire.

Which oddly gives Tina Fey authority. Tina Fey has been in the room since Sarah Palin arrived. We knew this moment was coming. We all looked forward to it.

Tina Fey is a funny woman, a successful comedian who is also quite lovely. Much has been made of her success as a woman in comedy, a genre in entertainment which is known to be a boy’s club.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are professional women in the public eye in a tough business. They are using those credentials to say that inquiry into the candidate’s qualifications is part of process.

It is improper to focus on a woman’s appearance over her talent. This is dismissive.

That dismissive sexism is not the same as the malicious sexism that was directed at Hillary Clinton. It attacks successful women as inhumanely unfeminine. The logic seems to be that because the stereotypical woman is averse to confrontation, the woman who accepts the challenges to pursue high office must be some sort of sociopath. She must be stopped.

Yet, somewhere in Hillary’s campaign was a sense of entitlement that legitimately rubbed some people the wrong way. They were shouted down as sexist. Blurry stuff.

With this skit, two professional comedians make a point about their own profession. They mocked Hillary. They made fun of her sense of entitlement. They showed her flummoxed by Obama’s coddling by the press.

Now they’re going to make fun of Sarah Palin’s unwillingness to expose herself to questioning. They’re going to characterize her unwillingness to speak directly and characterize it as oblivious.

When Sarah Palin can’t answer foreign policy questions, that’s comedy gold, and they’re going to use it. Trust them. They are the professionals. This is funny.