The cold opener (which everyone should watch) featured a guest appearance by Tina Fey as Sarah Palin alongside Amy Pohler as Hillary Clinton giving a joint press conference concerning sexism and politics.  Palin herself couldn’t have done a better impression than Fey pulled off.  If she were still a regular on the show, I might even make an effort to continue watching the show.  But the rest of the show managed to stifle that desire.

Michael Phelps was the guest host of the show and his greeting routine was odd, but amusing – the impersonation of his mom was somewhat expected but fine, but Shatner’s appearance to dispense endorsement advice was priceline priceless.  I was with American in loving Phelps’ sweep of the gold, but I knew better than to have high expectations of his performance on SNL – his placement was as anticipated – in filler roles where you could laugh at whatever hair/clothes they opted to put him in.  Unfortunately, those made up the majority of the laughs the rest of the show drew from me.

Most of the sketches they went with were either obsurd, or good in premise but poorly executed.  The quiz show routine over-stretched a jab at home-schooling and made me pine for more classic SNL game show parody such as Celebrity Jeopardy.  The Charles Barkley Show sketch which featured Darrel Hammond as Bella Caroli had great potential to (a) poke fun at some of the Olympic contraversies and commentators and (b) introduce a decent impression of Barkley (Frank Calliendo is doing one already), but it failed to deliver on either. 

It wasn’t completely horrible.  The Phelps Diet Plan was amusing and the T-Mobile ad was kind of funny (though it made fun of a commercial that has been airing since long before their summer hiatus).  The Weekend Update still offers an amusing twist on headlines and Fred Armisen’s say-nothing editorialist character is good for a few laughs.  But when mixed with digital shorts like Space Olympics and Jar Glove, I’m not as inclined to give then benefit of the doubt.

SNL has gone through dry patches in the past, but I’m not sure that they stock is solid enough to muscle through much more of the likes of this.  And with the election politics stoking as they are, they need to be on point with these things.  Sure The Daily Show and The Colbert Report do a great job with such material, but neither offers us exaggerated impressions of our candidates on which to foolishly base our voting decision.  I hope that they rein it in in time for it to make their impression and meanwhile actually come up with some funnier material.

If there is one thing these last 2 weeks has cemented in my mind, it is that I am fairly liberal-minded.  I have known that already, but if there was any doubt.  Whatever doubt Obama hadn’t extinguished, Palin finished off (Jon Stewart helped a bit, too).  But I guess because I spent more time talking about the negatives and the issues that I took with what I heard of late, the code that tries to figure out what keywords to base advertising on saw a saturation of GOP-related information.  I guess if I was eagerly committed to shifing this tide, I could just write a whole paragraph or 2 of Barrack Obama over and over again (or I could actually write something positive about him … worth considering).  But I’m not that petty – after all, the advertisers are paying me, not vice versa.  So if a couple of pennies from McCain’s warchest end up trickling into this liberal’s bank account, so be it.  I mean, if by some chance he manages to get elected, I’m a long way from that $5 million middle-class mark so I’ve better start working on getting there.

I tried to watch W. the other night and couldn’t get through more than a minute of it before changing the channel.  There is a reason that his approval rating is so low and I’m reminded of it every time he opens his mouth.  But last night I DID manage to watch all of Sarah Palin’s introductory/acceptance speech.  I listened, I kept an open mind, and in the end I still found myself annoyed and rolling my eyes.  It was a good speech and she said the right things to convince the conservative base that she is the right person for the job.  But she didn’t say anything that would woo me in their direction.  While I’m glad that she said “no thanks” to the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’, there is no amount of rhetoric that will convince me that drilling for more oil anywhere is a good idea (much like I could not be convinced that hunting for terrorists and WMDs in Iraq was a good idea).  I also am not convinced that there is such a thing as clean coal technology.

I can see that the experience card is going to get played a lot on both sides from now until November.  But I think from an objective standpoint, you have to agree that Obama’s experience is more extensive than Palin’s.  While yes, mayor and governor jobs are more similar to the presidency than legislative positions, Obama has probably had to handle and be aware of more president-related issues in his 4 years in the senate than Palin may have been exposed to in the remote state of Alaska.  Also, the comparison is generally moot since Palin is only the VP – for that job, legislative experience is actually more valuable than executive experience which makes Biden the better VP candidate in this election.  And while McCain inarguably has way more experience than Obama in his Senate tenure, that doesn’t change the fact that Obama echos the sentiments I care about and is gunning for changes I want to see on more levels than McCain.

So in the end, Palin can convey well what is written for her (she should be able to being a former beauty queen and sportscaster), but she doesn’t convey any of the ideals with which I agree and there is nothing in her experience or character to which I’m drawn (though some might say she at least has the MILF-factor – not sure that is enough for a vote).  It seems to me that the GOP is opting to use her to say the harsher things that McCain shouldn’t say himself.  But I’d imagine we will see the same tactic from the Democrats in the weeks to come, and I think it will have more weight coming from someone who is actually in the trenches and knows a thing or two about DC.  People may argue about whether Palin was properly vetted, at this point, I’m not going to complain.  Based on what I’ve seen, McCain and Co. are doing what they need to do to secure this election … for Obama.