The XX Factor: What women really think.

Joe the Plumber Did Not Hook Up With an SNL Performer

Update: Well, now I know what to think of the blog claiming Joe Wurzelbacher was life of the Saturday Night Live after-party this weekend. The poster is a hoaxster, and I got punk'd. 

The blogger, called Marty Eisenstadt, claims he and the iconic plumber were "downing shots of Makers Mark" at the party following John and Cindy McCain's guest appearance this weekend and that Joe "got some ‘quality' alone time with a certain female cast member." An SNL press manager wrote to say that Eisenstadt's post was "completely untrue." Although Eisenstadt blogged that John and Cindy McCain were at the after-party, "they most certainly were not," according to the NBC e-mail, and "more importantly -- neither of my female cast members ‘hooked up' with Mr. Wurzelbacher." 

As further proof of my own gullibility, I submit this alert I subsequently found on Sourcewatch.org advising that Eisenstadt doesn't exist. I'm beginning to think Wurzelbacher doesn't either.  

Backstage at SNL With Joe the Plumber

I don't know what to make of this McCain strategist's report of witnessing "canoodling" between Joe (who has apparently joined the McCain entourage) and a Saturday Night Live cast member at the after-party this weekend.

SNL's Cleverness

Emily, unlike you, I thought the first sketch on SNL was quite…brilliant. I was going to say I liked it, but that’s not exactly true. The bit where Alec Baldwin went on (in front of SNL producer Lorne Michaels) about how Sarah Palin was not someone “we” should associate with was designed to make us uncomfortable, and that’s what I admired about it.  It was digging at how political discourse in this country has become bifurcated. And it was pointing to how profoundly many of have grown isolated within our clans of like-minded people (especially in Hollywood and in the entertainment media). The cost of getting Sarah Palin to NYC to perform on SNL: a couple hundred dollars, say. Making us watch as Baldwin accidentally said to her face all the things “we” have said to our friends dissecting the debates over drinks: priceless.

And as for the moment when Baldwin crudely looks her up and down—it’s gross, to be sure, but I thought it was a self-conscious riff on his character on 30 Rock, who’s always manhandling Tina Fey (and every other female he comes in contact with)with his eyes. He was being gross in character, I’d say, and that’s what made it funny—the play off the way he is with Tina Fey, and all the odd levels that go into that: the fact that Tina Fey is a feminist-minded type, first, and the fact that Palin is a tough gal who can take it, second. Baldwin’s supposed to seem ridiculous, and by implication so is the whole culture of spectatorship, I think. Of course, SNL went on to implicate us in that culture of spectatorship, so one could continue to spin out the iterations. But I found that skit kind of gutsy on everyone’s part.