Saturday Night Blackface

When you really want to cut to the chase of political discourse, or any discourse for that matter, don't turn on the Evening News or pick up a newspaper. No instead check out the funnies, flip to Comedy Central. Laughter is an awesome force of sharing and shaping social thought. Think Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Margaret Cho, Family Guy, and even Jerry Seinfield's shows about "nothing" actually proved to be a remarkable something for Jewish identity in popular culture. These comedians and cultural phenoms wear a mask of laughter that gives them carte blanche access to controversial, politically incorrect, and just down right uncouth subjects that sometimes has no business on television or for that matter said in ear shot of anybody's momma. This is why the introduction by Saturday Night Live of its new Barack Obama character was as anticipated in some circles as it was. What better political figure to parody than Obama. It's gotta be a hit, right?

Wrong.

Scholars, columnists, and bloggers (ahem) are outraged at the casting of a non-Black actor as Barack Obama. Turn's out Fred Armisten is half white and Asian. Granted whoever plays Obama, parody and implicit sarcasm and masking will be in play. But blackface? Come on now, it ain't like we should go there. To assume that NBC does not have the resources for a proper national casting call among Black or actors of Mixed Black heritage to find an Obama actor based on merit is delusional (And doesn't SNL's merit defense sound uncomfortably close to something one of my hateful fav 5's UT Law Professor Lino Graglia has been known to fart out?).

Reading between the lines of the Washington Post article linked above, I get the feeling that the SNL producers are pushing back with the "he played Prince and nobody cared then" line. My response to them is: we didn't care cause we didn't know boozo heads! And I think others might also push back with the fact that Obama is mixed race himself and has positioned his campaign as post-race so colorblind casting is just deserts and fair game. I say hogwash. Obama has said repeatedly that his election would not end racial inequalities (citation to come).

I have watched the video of Mr. Armisten's first performance of Obama. At the time I did not know Armisten was wearing darker makeup and was non-Black. I was underwhelmed by his performance and thought he seemed a bit nervous. Knowing now that the actor isn't even Black is further proof of how much of a better performance Obama needs than his opponents to get a laugh and win the election.

Onward!

P.S. I have purposely not provided the link to the SNL video out of protest. It is only available on NBC's website which has a number of ads on the site and embedded with the SNL footage that undoubtedly are paying the checks of the very same producers and casting agents I've been hating in this blog entry.