Tina Fey Returns to SNL to Mock Palin, Tea Partiers

Tina Fey returned to SNL last night to reprise her Sarah Palin character. Watch it here:

Fey and SNL’s caricature of the former VP candidate did some serious damage to Palin’s reputation and thus the McCain campaign in 2008, but if these stale punchlines are the best they can offer in 2010, maybe they should have just kept this character retired.

Jokes tend not to be as funny when it’s obvious the comic holds his/her subject(s) in contempt. There’s a fine line between “jokes” and “insults,” and when mean-spirited jokes aren’t funny, then they’re just… mean.

In 2008, SNL was able to affect the Presidential election with provocative original satire; you could debate what was in their messages, but not that the messages were delivered effectively. Now they’re just piling on with dated Palin-is-dumb jokes (such as a winking joke, a writing on hand joke, a death panel joke, a Katie Couric interview joke…). Yawn. Fake Sarah Palin has lost her edge.