I didn't include this in SNL: Just The Funny Parts, because it isn't one, but in a Weekend Update segment this weekend, SNL made their stance on bloggers known with a mouth-breathing portrayal by Michaela Watkins. For anyone taking Intro To Rhetoric, this is a perfect example of a STRAW MAN:
Ugh. SNL, please put that segment into a time machine and send it back to 2005, where it would make sense as a parody of Perez Hilton instead of a transparent attempt to discount all online critics (pegging it to the Oscars was a nice distraction effort, though). While it's probably comforting for TV stars to tell themselves that everyone on the internet who criticizes them is a socially inept pajama-clad loser doing so from his or her parent's basement, the reality is that in 2009 that is just not true. (I changed into real clothes hours ago.) Seth Myers does know that all of his Weekend Update news jokes have already been made by bloggers by the time Saturday night rolls around, right? I mean, that's just a timing issue, but if he thinks he's not doing exactly what bloggers do but on TV, for ten minutes a week, and with twenty writers, he's kidding himself. On behalf of bloggers as a whole, I would like to say "Remember last fall when everyone finally started talking about you again? WE MADE THAT HAPPEN. And as your former Weekend Update co-host, who answered her anonymous online critics in a much classier and funnier way would say: you can suck it."
(HOWEVER, ALL OF THAT SAID, Michaela Watkins's portrayal is completely accurate if you change "blogger" to "YouTube commenter".)
