Character sketch

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the Washington Post...

[Saturday Night Lives' Fred] Armisen played [Barack] Obama opposite Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton in a sketch satirizing the supposedly cushy treatment his candidacy has received from the media....

Nobody much cared about Armisen's racial background (he is of white and Asian heritage) when he played Prince and Steve Jobs during seasons past of the NBC show. Nor did it seem to matter that "SNL's" Darrell Hammond, who is white, has impersonated the Rev. Jesse Jackson for years. Or that decades ago on "SNL," Billy Crystal played Sammy Davis Jr....

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune put the question bluntly: "Call me crazy, but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack Obama be played by an African-American?" Ryan went on to conclude: "I find 'SNL's' choice inexplicable. Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL' still has further to go on that front."

Hannah Pool, a writer for the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, suggested the whole setup had "minstrel" overtones.

"Casting a black actor wouldn't have guaranteed the quality of the sketch, but it would have made the whole thing a lot less shoddy," Pool wrote. "Let's get one thing straight. The moment anyone starts reaching for 'blackface,' they are on extremely dodgy territory. Anyone who thinks it's either necessary or, for that matter, remotely funny to black-up needs to have the gauge on their moral compass reset."

So do these Liberals not share Dr. King's dream, or are they claiming that Barack Obama has no character, so the only thing available to judge him by is his pigmentation? Either way, it seems they need to explain themselves better.

Posted by Danny Carlton at February 29, 2008 7:14 AM