Hillary's SNL Strategy

By James Poniewozik

The Feb. 26 democratic debate in Cleveland was a clash of styles and a battle of ideas, but above all, it was an example of the benefits of corporate vertical integration in TV. Hillary Clinton used one NBC Universal property (Saturday Night Live) to attack another NBC Universal property (MSNBC, the debate host) for its treatment of her. Clinton--whose aides have fiercely criticized her coverage--complained to Brian Williams that she is repeatedly asked the first question at the debates, then referenced a Feb. 23 skit that showed debate moderators grilling Amy Poehler's Clinton while tossing softballs to Obama. "If anybody saw Saturday Night Live," she said, "you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow."

You want synergy? You want meta-referentiality? Clinton got in a shot at the media. SNL got political validation--a sketch about debates becoming the central moment at a debate. MSNBC got guaranteed free publicity from media folks like myself who love to obsess on the importance of media. Everybody wins!

Politically, Clinton's barb may have been too elliptical and insider-y for voters at home. (In the debate room, it drew applause and boos.) To get it, you needed to have seen the SNL skit and to be familiar with the charge that the press is in love with Obama--in which case, you were probably involved enough to know who you were voting for already. To a Texas or Ohio voter tuning in for the first time, it may have been sympathetic (The media sucks! Woo-hoo!), or it may have been confusing (Uh, getting the first question at a debate is a bad thing?).

Pop-culturally, though, SNL returned just when Clinton needed it. For months, she's been outgunned in the increasingly important field of political entertainment surrogate videos, while Obama has owned YouTube. There was the parody (unauthorized by his campaign) of the Apple 1984 ad, which made her out to be a Big Sister--like totalitarian. Viral-video chanteuse Obama Girl expressed her love for him in song and across the back of her hot pants. And will. i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, with a host of singer and actor buddies, set an Obama speech to music in the Yes, We Can music video. Meanwhile, Clinton, after kicking off last summer with a sharp Sopranos-parody video, has made do with a lame Behind the Music spoof--released by her own campaign, the equivalent of taking your brother to the prom.

Now, with Clinton against the wall in a bar fight, SNL handed her not one but two broken whiskey bottles: the debate skit and a brilliant girl-power endorsement from Tina Fey, who obliterated the worst arguments against Hillary--Bill fatigue, her age and the charge that she's a bitch. "Bitches get stuff done," Fey sassed. "Bitch is the new black!"

Yeah, I know, this is a sideshow--it has nothing to do with the issues; it's pop-culture noise that doesn't matter. Except it does. Entertainment surrogates can make points you wouldn't put in your candidate's own mouth. (Clinton probably could not compare herself to a mean old nun who forces you to learn the capital of Vermont. Coming from Fey, it somehow works.) They attract free media. They can capture emotion more viscerally than a policy paper. (By playing off the rhythm and call-and-response of Obama's words, Yes We Can literally rendered his prose into lyrics.) And as much as people may say that they don't care about celebrity endorsements, videos convey the intangible sense that people are moved enough by a candidate to create.

Whatever it is they offer--buzz, cool, a psychological boost--Clinton needed it. So it was unsurprising, if a little weird, to see her staffers injecting SNL into their talking points the following Monday. See, Mom? TV criticism is a real job!

Beyond the reflected hipness, the debate skit served a Clinton campaign theme: that Big Media has grilled her ceaselessly while going wobbly over hot, charismatic young Obama. (An often true argument, if undercut by the fact that the point was made for her by giant Big Media institution SNL.) And Cleveland was the perfect place to press the attack, since MSNBC has been the campaign's chief target, from Chris Matthews' criticisms of Clinton on Hardball to host David Shuster's remark that she "pimped out" daughter Chelsea on the campaign trail.

It's unclear if Clinton can pull out a win by convincing voters that journalism's old boys have ganged up on her, but at least the skit crystallized the argument. And if she succeeds, it will be partly by doing something the Bush Administration has perfected: running against the mainstream media. Clinton has spent months arguing that she's the best candidate to beat the gop. With her SNL strategy, maybe she can instead make the case that she's the best candidate to beat the press.