Well, it wasn't the Arsenio Hall show...

If you haven’t seen it here is McCain’s appearance on Saturday Night Live




The fact that he is actually being criticized by some conservatives like Laura Ingraham is baffling. Veiled swipes by Obama concerning McCain’s age would indicate that his holiness, if not personally, would certainly like his surrogates to pick up the struggle along this tack.

But its self-deprecating humor and the ability to humanize yourself to potential voters that serves a three-fold purpose: 1) By using humor, you take the issue off the table as a serious topic and 2) you increase your likeability quotient among the electorate while 3)simultaneously painting your opponent into a corner by risking looking petty if they play the age card.

As to Ingraham’s contention that it is beneath McCain to appear on SNL - that is pure non-sense. If these types of appearances can be managed properly and framed in the proper context as Team McCain did brilliantly in this particular appearance, then doing gigs on SNL or similar is absolutely imperative this day in age.

Indeed, if Bill Clinton can be credited for tipping the youth vote by playing sax on the Arsenio Hall Show (Arsenio!), then certainly a well-played spot on the platform of a cultural arbiter like SNL should be worth something.

H/T: KT