I watched SNL’s take on the vice-presidential debate. For the most part: Meh. It started strong. In fact, it started accurate. It was interesting how the best parts were almost verbatim from the actual debate. The dumbest parts came from the effort to provide “balance” and make fun of Paul Ryan too. It was almost as if honestly lambasting Joe Biden felt unfair, so they had to throw in the rest to assuage their guilt.
Politically, the important thing is that the stupid attacks on Ryan got no pick up in the news. I’ve seen the snippets reflecting Biden’s real-world boorish behavior all over the place. This just reinforces a point made by Jim Bennett and others. These events have a much more powerful bounce than they used to, in social media, cable, etc. With the exception of MSNBC, I doubt anyone would think to run the excerpts about Ryan, because they have nothing to do with the national conversation about Biden, such as it is.