The race between Obama and McCain seems to have shifted, and a lot of that has to do with McCain's gaffe about the fundamentals of the economy, but Tina Fey deserves a huge amount of credit for turning this race because of her spot-on reduction of Sarah Palin to a caricature on Saturday Night Live.
Brilliant comedy sifts through the many layers of masks that people put on to arrive at the fundamental reality, often a cruel reality, that lies beneath the masks. It's a reality that anyone hearing the comic's riff can recognize: it's truth where truth cannot be spoken. Of course, the wonderful irony is that the truth is understood, in comedy, even through another mask, the comedic mask (hey, I'm making this up as I go along).
Tina Fey's portrayal of Sarah Palin's empty self-assurance, repeated "lines" and millimeter-deep understanding of anything outside her state reduced Sarah Palin to a caricature faster and more effectively than tens of New York Times articles could have done. The giggle that went with "I can see Russia from my house" and about the Bush doctrine..."I don't know what that is," with the helpless wave of the hand, cemented Palin forever in my mind. Whether that portrayal was fair or not, I don't know (I think it was fair, actually), but the image is now there, forever. Obviously it is there in others' minds, also, because it is Tina Fey who said "I can see Russia from my house," not Sarah Palin. It was a brilliant reduction of Sarah Palin's reality to something we can all laugh at. To my mind (apart from the economic crisis), the viral spread of the SNL skit on YouTube was the turning point of the campaign. Go YouTube!