Saturday Night Live fell completely flat with their sorry attempt at making light of Rudy Giuliani attacking President Obama for supposedly not loving the country presides over. Here's what they thought should pass for comedy on this weekend's Cold Open: The 'SNL' 'Birdman' Parody Allows Rudy Giuliani To Relive His Glorified Past:
During Saturday Night Live’s cold open, Rudy Giuliani (aka Taran Killam) was talking to Gretchen Carlson (Vanessa Bayer) about recent comments he has made regarding President Obama. During a commercial break, the SNL Giuliani went full inner-monologue, a la Birdman, which allowed the former Mayor of New York to relive his glory days just like Michael Keaton in the Oscar winning film.
After leaving the set, Giuliani walked through the studio fighting against his internal voice asking questions like “How did we get here?” It was pretty spot on to Birdman’s Keaton, who was nominated for an Oscar in the film. The best part of the entire joke is Giuliani has kind of become the real life Birdman. As Huff Post says, ”What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?” He was once a big deal, he almost became president for like two-seconds. Now, he’s “What Happened to Rudy Giuliani.”
SNL host, Dakota Johnson, played the role of his daughter, aka Emma Stone in the film. She called him out for not being on Twitter, and saying no one cares what he has to say, a scene directly from Birdman. Giuliani then returned to his interview, which was then interrupted by the fire alarm, allowing Giuliani to take charge and feel like the hero he once (maybe) was.
How about the "hero" he never was? For something to be funny, there ought to at least be some semblance of truth to the humor. That seems to be something Saturday Night Live has had a problem figuring out for some time now.
First of all, Giuliani's "glory days" as New York mayor are a myth. He stuck the emergency response center in the bottom of the World Trade Center, which is why he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off that day. He had nowhere to go since he put the emergency headquarters in the one place that was the most likely to be blown up by terrorists.
And despite that fact, and despite how they treated the health of any of the 9-11 first responders following that awful tragedy, Giuliani has done nothing but use what happened that day to either enrich himself or to raise his own national profile and to pretend that he's now some expert on national security.
Giuliani is a terrorism "expert" in the same way that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were "experts" on invading countries that weren't a threat to us. And in what world is Giuliani supposedly having some sort of personal crisis by being forced to appear on Faux "news" too often to suit him?
Sorry SNL writers, but you completely failed on this one. If you'd like some lessons on how to cover lying Rudy in a manner that actually generates some laughs from your audience, here you go.
Colbert back in 2008: Indecision 2008: Don't F%#k This Up America - Giuliani
And Jon Stewart just this last week: Stewart To Giuliani: You Know You're Not The Mayor Of 9-11, Right?
