TEVI TROY: Celebrating 50 years of presidential mockery

Nov marks the th anniversary of Chevy Chase s comedic portrayal of U S President Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz on Saturday Night Live Nowadays we expect SNL to mock the president There s even speculation going into each administration about who will play the president But when Chase did it for the first time it was groundbreaking In fact in the years before SNL mocking the president on what was still the relatively new mass medium of television often had to overcome resistance from grid censors and presidential pressure alike In the early s NBC executives would not allow a comedy sketch about President John F Kennedy to appear on its Art Carney Show As a architecture spokesperson explained we thought it would have been improper to have performers definitely portraying the President and his wife adding that the decision was based on a matter of good taste The networks were similarly reluctant to mock Kennedy s successor Lyndon Johnson In NBC imported the British parody show That Was the Week That Was which was specifically developed in England to prick the pomposity of residents figures Although the show did get in an occasional poke at Johnson NBC censors constantly battled the show s producers over LBJ jokes NBC also took the step of suspending all political humor on the show around the presidential polling Another show that tried to make fun of the president was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour The show which premiered on CBS in even got pushback from Johnson himself One skit that mocked Johnson prompted Johnson to tell CBS Chairman William Paley in a late-night call get those b------- off my back Paley petitioned the show to go easier on the president JIMMY KIMMEL'S LATE-NIGHT EVOLUTION FROM APOLITICAL FUNNYMAN TO DEM ACTIVISTWhen Richard Nixon was elected in the brothers pledged to lay off the jokes about the incoming president for a time But that pledge did not stop them from having the comedian David Frye impersonate Nixon on the show Still the show was cancelled in April of over a host of controversies including sex and religion jokes as well as political ones On the final episode the brothers read a letter from former President Johnson claiming that he had been ok with being mocked It is part of the price of leadership to be the target of clever satirists You have given the gift of laughter to us May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate humor Although the words were admirable it was a little hard to take Johnson seriously given his earlier intervention with Paley As for Frye with the show canceled he continued to impersonate Nixon on comedy albums But even here the networks continued to obstruct In the three major networks refused to accept advertising in New York for Frye s Watergate-related album According to a WABC-TV spokesman It's such a serious matter we've decided not to accept advertising for any comedy material relating to Watergate DAVID MARCUS WITH TRUMP IN POWER SOUTH PARK SEEKS TO GET ITS EDGE BACKWith this backdrop in mind SNL must have known that it was taking a menace when it had Chase send up the president on live TV Chase s portrayal went beyond light jokes at the president s expense Chase was pratfalling around the Oval Office holding up a glass rather than a phone to his ear and pouring water from a pitcher onto the papers on his desk Yet the show not only survived but it thrived That first SNL presidential skit was a watershed moment that helped fundamentally change the relationship between the American people and the president The s and s had brought the U S presidency down in the eyes of the American people The Kennedy assassination shocked Americans who did not realize the president was so vulnerable The Johnson years punctured the bubble of presidential honesty about foreign affairs Nixon s Watergate controversy punctured a similar bubble about domestic affairs And then the unelected Ford came to power and almost forthwith pardoned Nixon for Watergate The decision is lauded in retrospect but was controversial at the time Chase s opening the show as Ford on that day in brought mocking presidents out from the narrowcast world of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl comedy routines and more regularly into the mass media That first SNL sketch ushered in a period in which presidents became both closer to and further from the American people Mockery can keep physically-removed politicians less distant from everyday citizens As a product presidents are now nearly ubiquitous in a world of TV and social media with constant mockery taking them down a peg or more In this world even a short presidential disappearance of a day or two can lead to unfounded rumors of a presidential demise At the same time presidents are further from the American people in that the precaution bubble around them is so much tighter The White House resembles an armed camp Presidential motorcades are unapproachable and presidents are hard-pressed to continue to communicate regularly with friends George W Bush gave up e-mail Obama resisted pressure to give up his BlackBerry In our current Chevy Chase-enabled world presidential mockery is a constant While Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel learned that presidents and setup suits can still target an individual comic or show those are unfortunate exceptions rather than the rule and even Kimmel s exile lasted barely a week The continuing mockery of the president on Kimmel as well as South Park Jon Stewart social media and a host of other places shows that the genie of mass industry largely uncensored mockery of presidents unleashed by Chevy Chase on SNL a half century ago is not going back in the bottle and for that we should be grateful CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TEVI TROY