October 19, 2008
The Week in Television
More Ladies with Balls
Between grant applications and book stuff, it's been a crazy couple of weeks for me (oh dear, this does seem to be turning into a blog, hard as I try to avoid it). But I'm glad I waited to write, because last night's SNL made my week. It's rare that I'm at a loss for words, but by the time they shot the dancing moose with the real Gov. Palin presiding, my jaw had dropped to the floor and I was staring with admiration. The reason? These ladies have balls.
Before I continue, let me clear something up. Whenever I say women have balls, I either get perplexed looks (from people who question the anatomical feasibilty of my statement) or snorts of derision (from feminists who feel I should be saying "ovaries" instead of "balls"). All of them can fuck off. I'm a pragmatic feminist, and I'm not going to waste my time trying to change the meaning and strength of the word "ovaries." There have been a lot of studies and it just doesn't work in terms of linguistic distribution. Besides, actual balls are made metaphorically powerful by their visibility and size, features that ovaries just don't have. Hell, my feminist goal (if I can be said to have one) is a complete separation of reproduction and women's power, akin in my mind to the separation of church and state. I don't want any of my acheivements predicated on my reproductive abilities. Much in the same way I suggested for the word "asshole," I'd prefer to make "balls" completely metaphorical and therefore unisex.
The women who had balls last night were Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and yes, Gov. Sarah Palin herself. They were all fearless, and deserve the highest praise for their performances. In the opener Fey didn't soften her imitation at all, and offered to entertain the audience with "some fancy pageant walkin'." Meanwhile, the camera cut to the real Palin standing with Lorne Michaels backstage, and there was some funny business when Alec Baldwin, pretending to mistake Palin for Fey, said some not-so-flattering things about Palin. He then ran onstage to warn "our poor little Tina" that the real Palin was there.
I was little disappointed that there wasn't more Fey/Palin interaction onstage. I was kind of hoping for a moment like the one (for those who remember it) when John Belushi did his Joe Cocker imitation next to Cocker himself, and you couldn't tell who was who. Fey and Palin did nod (with respect, I suppose) at each other as they crossed paths onstage, and that was pretty damned cool. But what Fey didn't do, Poehler did, and like Samantha Bee before her she wielded her pregnant belly like a weapon of mass destruction. The result? An enormously pregnant Poehler rapping about moose-hunting, McCain's fake smile, and even seeing Russia, right in front of Palin. Behind Poehler danced a posse of Eskimos and the aforementioned fake moose. Not quite to the level of Colbert's in-persona Correspondents' Dinner performance, but close.
The premise was that Gov. Palin had been scheduled to perform the rap, and had decided at the last minute that it wouldn't be good for the campaign. The latter part, at least, is quite true and Palin certainly did the right thing by showing up and not saying anything, even in jest, that could be used against her later (Al Franken, for instance, has been haunted by his comic past). But she does deserve some recognition what she did. Even though I love comedy, I've been known to lose my sense of humor just a tad when I'm under stress. Who knows how real that smile was, but Palin showed up and didn't throttle the comedians who had been questioning her competence for a month. Even though her appearance was without a doubt politically motivated, the woman deserves credit for being a good sport.
