Even if it's a negative portrayal, being featured on the sketch series is still a sure-fire sign that the person portrait is part of the national consciousness. And if it's a negative portrayal, the last thing they want to do is give the writers more material to work into their next impression.
Apparently, no one said that Laura Ingraham.
The Fox News host of The Ingraham Angle, which is more like a "right angle" either didn't take too kindly to Kate McKinnon's impression of her during the cold open of a recent episode hosted by SNL alum Will Forte or thought she could do a better impression of herself on her own show. The real Ingraham's impression of McKinnon's impression made my shoulder cave in faster than one of Bob Murray's coal mines.
People who watch Ingraham's show on a regular basis may have found her response funny, but to the rest of us it just sounds like Pee Wee Herman doing the "I know you are but what I am, no you are" game. Actually to be accurate in this scenario, Ingraham is more like Francis Buxton, because Pee Wee makes people laugh on purpose.Laura Ingraham is spitting jealous of Kate McKinnon.
— Tara Dublin (@taradublinrocks) January 25, 2022
Oh, and she also texted Mark Meadows on January 6th & told him to tell Donald Trump to call off the crowd 🤬 #TrumpCoupAttempt https://t.co/uEE53jm8g9
Politics these days often serve no other purpose than to make the other side cry. All those T-shirts that say "Liberal tears" are not referring to a Sam Stone tribute band. The expression is like a sports energy drink: It fuels the ego and replenishes lost electrolytes from the times the other side made them cry and vice versa.
Everyone should learn how to take a joke in stride especially when their side is constantly complaining about how comedians are getting canceled. Who knows? You could be president or the governor of Texas some day. It's not like qualifications matter in politics. Those are only reserved for everyone else.
Here are the lessons we learned from Ingraham about how to deal with satire.
1. Don't Acknowledge It
Comedy veteran and National Lampoon writer Tony Hendra once said, "It is the job of a satirist to make people in power uncomfortable."
So the WORST thing you can do to someone who does an impersonation or makes a joke about you is respond to it in any form or fashion. Unfortunately, social media has made this so much easier to do and harder to resist.
Back in the day, if MAD printed the name "George Notaclooney" in its review of "Buttman and Robbin $15 Bucks From You" then George Clooney would have to sit at a desk, write a letter by hand and send it off to the editor of the magazine's "Letters and Tomatoes Dept." Now you can just push a button and instantaneously show the world the slenderness of your skin.
And by doing so you're just confirming the joke's goal hit its target on your side of the Battleship board. If you acknowledge that whatever comedy has irked you in some way, I promise you that whoever crafted and performed the bit is celebrating harder than someone who won one of those oversized checks from the Publisher's Clearinghouse.
2. Don't Tell the Other Person How to Tell a Joke
Pundits make this mistake all the time. Their job is to express an opinion so naturally that's how they'll respond if they are stupid enough to air a clip of the comedy bit where they were mocked.
Conservative host Candace Owens of The Daily Wire made the same mistake about the very same sketch when she tried to give a more nuanced and less callow response than Ingraham. SNL's Ego Nwodim had a very brief appearance impersonating Owens as Ingraham's "one Black friend" but Nwodim had less lines in her performance than Owens had in her response, a speech where she said stuff like how in her profession she would never "mock somebody thinking for themselves or portraying them as someone who's monkey stupid." To be fair, it's hard to know what constitutes stupid when you're already at the level where you're posting stuff like a photo of Kyle Rittenhouse wiping away the tears of Lebron James with a bottle of Windex after he's found not guilty of murder.
Ingraham's response is a cringey rant that ends with her offering to go on SNL to do an impression of Nancy Pelosi so she can joke about the "low hanging fruit" of President Biden's foibles.
If SNL has learned its lesson after letting former President Donald Trump host a dismal episode in the middle of one of the most divisive elections of our time, they won't take the bait.
3. Don't Try to Do the Voice Yourself
This is something known even by children with a limited knowledge of insults. You can't do an impression of an impression and get a laugh unless the joke is that the impression you're doing is purposely crappier than the original. Take, for example, genius impersonator James Adomian's impersonation of Alec Baldwin doing an impression of Donald Trump as an unhinged mental patient who can't form words or say them in an even, measured tone.
Ingraham's impression of Kate McKinnon's impression of her doesn't know what it wants to be. It's cold and unfunny but also clueless and pointless. It's an empty vessel to deliver mindless talking points that serve a single political agenda. It wants to make fun of someone just because someone called them out for their bullshit but it fails so hard, you can hear the thunk sound it makes when it hits the pavement.
So actually, McKinnon also got Laura Ingraham to do the perfect impression of Laura Ingraham.
