You know who I haven't been hearing a lot about lately?
Hillary Clinton.
So I, for some reason, felt compelled to go back through the last
25 odd years or so of pop culture Hillarys.
"Don't talk for one second.
"And... go!"
[overlapping insults]
[buzzer]
"They couldn't even do it for a second!"
It's easy to forget for those of us who grew up in or after the Clinton era,
but a lot of people saw Hillary Clinton as more threatening than Bill because of what she represented.
"Beside the man, not behind anymore, but beside..."
It was unprecedented, for instance, for a First Lady to identify herself as a career gal. Like, stuff like this,
"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had tea,
but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession..."
Shots fired.
But it wasn't just that. The Clintons pitched themselves almost as like a two-for-one deal.
That wasn't something dreamed up by the media, although they did focus on it.
"If Bill were ever incapacitated, I would assume the presidency!"
And, full concession, a full half of this -ish will be more-or-less the history of Hillary on SNL.
But that in and of itself is an interesting history, worthy of discussion.
[Bill] "Alright, let it go-"
"Go ahead, don't vote for him! I'll be fine, I have a job,
I'm a liar!"
Jan Hooks was the first SNL Hillary, despite having left the main cast by the time Clinton took office.
She played Hillary up until Janeane Garofolo took over very briefly in the mid-90s.
One of the earlier sketches positions Hillary as the popular one,
where Bill isn't as well-liked.
"Could you say that Somalia and Haiti were your idea?"
"It would really help a ton. Everyone loves you."
How times change.
And a James Carville, played by John Malkovich, tries to get her to run against Bill in 1996.
"Hillary, uh, I'll see you in 96... minutes!"
Although this sketch does end with surprising sincerity. Yes, there was a time,
albeit brief, where the Clintons were depicted as being in a loving marriage.
"I love you."
"And I love you."
"Hey good-lookin, want to go check out the Lincoln bedroom?"
[Hillary laughs]
That didn't last too long.
The early Clinton years was where we started to see over-ambitious power-hungry Hillary.
"Yeah, but I got together and-"
"I happen to be the co-president of the United States-"
[laughter]
Difficulties with her push for health care reform
eventually had SNL framing her as being in over her head.
"How's that health care reform plan coming along?"
"Well, It's difficult to-"
"I thought so, you don't have a clue, do you?!"
And we even have Bob Dole putting Hillary in her place.
"So why don't you run along and whip up a batch of
chocolate chip oatmeal raisin macaroons, marshmallow treats, or whatever you make,
and keep your nose out of things you know nothing about!"
[laughter, applause]
Yeah, that's what you get for pushing for universal health care, you harpy.
Not long after that we start to see this sort of
Honeymooners dynamic start to develop with Hillary being quietly annoyed by her doofus husband.
"I like sex. I like hot, stinky sex, alright?"
[applause, cheering]
But when independent from Bill, most portrayals from the early Clinton years,
the ones that weren't explicitly partisan, anyway, remain surprisingly respectful.
"Hillary Clinton has revolutionized the role of the first lady in this country."
There's an episode of Step by Step where she goes to Suzanne Somers' salon to get a haircut
and everyone's like yay, it's Hillary!
"That's why Mrs. Clinton wants him to do her hair."
"Really? That's fantastic!"
In an episode of Roseanne,
she shows up to thank Roseanne for defeating a bunch of terrorists.
"It takes a village to raise a child,
but just one tough cookie like you to whip a bunch of terrorists!"
Hot damn, this show got squirrely.
"Well evidently we've landed on a world where women are in authority
and men are relegated to a second-class status."
There's also an episode of Sliders where the world they slide into is a
female-dominated dystopia.
"President Clinton?"
"Of course I mean Clinton, who else? I feel sorry for the prez, being married to that loudmouth."
I like how the guys are like, hehe, yeah, that loudmouth,
and then they see they're living under
The Matriarchy™.
"My fellow Americans-"
[Lindsay imitating cartoon sfx] Be-oing-oing-oing! Wah-wah-wah-waaah....
"I speak to you tonight from the White House..."
Wait a minute, if we're living under the matriarchy, why did she take Bill's name?
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Also of note:
all of the aforementioned besides SNL and many yet to be discussed portrayals
are played by the same woman, Teresa Barnwell,
who's been making it as a professional Hillary impersonator for 23 years and is still going at it.
"Pokemon Go to the poll!"
If you saw that Hillary's Dank Memes viral video,
"Oh, I'm sorry, are my memes too dank for you?
Don't let your memes be dreams!"
Yep, that's her. She even has a lock on the domain hillaryclintonimpersonator.com,
which has lovely site design, by the way.
So we can probably guess who she's rooting for in 2016.
...So she can keep working.
Around the end of Clinton's first term, the joke starts to become that Hillary is the real power
behind the throne and Bill is kind of a puppet.
♫ "But the ones in charge are plain to see, the Clintons, Bill and Hillary!" ♫
This one's relevant because THIS is the original line:
♫ "The one in charge is plain to see, it's Clinton, first name Hillary!" ♫
And all evidence appears to have been erased,
but I swear it was Hillary alone in the chair who swivels around in the original version.
And that's why there's a chair swivel. Because the joke doesn't really work with Bill in the chair.
It's not like a reveal. We know Bill's president. But unless some prescient, enterprising young soul
taped it back in the 90s and still has the VHS, that bit with Hillary in the chair
is probably lost to the sands of time, so just take my word for it.
We saw this joke again in Pinky and the Brain. In one episode Bill is entering his 377th term
as president and we are about to go to war with Canada.
"You think you can mess with the commander-in-chief like that? I'll show you who's boss!"
[Bill over speaker] "Excuse me, Hillary, we've got a situation here."
"I'm on it, Bill."
In another episode they have an almost Fred and Wilma dynamic.
"We've got to host a conference to stop this dumbing-down of America."
Hillary wants to combat the increasing dumbing down of America, and Bill is...
"Worst of all, people actually think Pauly Shore is funny."
"Don't rock my world! Hey, bu-uddy!"
The dumbest Rhodes scholar.
But it turns out that a Macarena parody called the Schmeerskahoven is what's making everyone dumber.
"You think Pauly Shore is funny?"
"Doesn't everyone? Bu-uddy!"
Wow, these shows really had it in for Pauly Shore.
She's there again in an episode of Freakazoid acting basically as co-president.
"Do you come in peace or war?"
She also has like a weird Jack Nicholson Joker face that I'm not sure is intentional,
so I'm not really gonna read into that.
But then came the Lewinsky era...
♫ "I did the world, (I did the world!)" ♫
Now all bets were off. It was open season on the Clintons.
♫ "A White House filled with sleaze, the Clinton Family." ♫
[snap, snap]
Most Hillarys of this era begin and end with being coldly annoyed with Bill, either openly,
"Nope!"
or secretly-not-so-secretly.
"Good luck, Snookums."
Ana Gasteyer has taken over the role of resident Hillary on Saturday Night Live,
and suddenly the Clintons really hate each other.
"Start yappin', ya she-witch!"
[laughter]
And they mine this mutual hatred for a couple years.
"What are you doing here with that whoremonger?!"
[Bill] "You talking to him or me?"
The Nanny has the Clintons pop up in a later episode,
and it's surprisingly restrained considering the environment at the time.
"We're trying to get pregnant, but it just doesn't seem to be happening."
[Bill] "Is there anything I can do to help?"
[laugh track]
Ah, there it is!
During this period, Hillary also made an appearance on the claymation MTV series Celebrity Deathmatch,
which, if you don't remember, is exactly what it sounds like, where she battles Monica Lewinsky.
"I'm here tonight to deliver an uplifting and positive message.
I'm gonna uplift this foot right here, and positively kick Monica Lewinsky's big fat ass!"
And though Hillary ends up dealing most of the violence,
[announcer] "I'm not sure even Hillary's health care plan would cover this kind of punishment!"
the match ends with the two of them teaming up to fight the real enemy.
[Hillary] "This is gonna get really messy."
...Off screen, which is surprisingly restrained for this show.
It didn't take SNL too long to expand past the hateful honeymooners thing as that got old pretty quick.
About a year after the Lewinsky scandal broke, SNL started grafting to a more sympathetic light
towards the Clintons, such as one famous sketch where the Clinton Clan
promises not to gloat about their enemy's failure to take them down.
"As you can see, we're not drinking champagne.
THAT would be gloating.
We're just drinking beer. And it's not even good beer. It's Pabst Blue Ribbon."
Or another, where she gets a special call from Barbara Walters.
"Are you aware of the part about the phone sex?"
"Oh yeah."
"Well, I was wondering if you'd like to try a little experiment-"
"I'll be the man!"
Or, Hillary needs to get laid.
"Because men can do whatever they want and everyone still likes them."
Even if it is over the phone.
Although they didn't ditch the honeymooners dynamic entirely, as after Hillary won
the seat in the senate, we got this sketch.
"I am leaving and you won't see me for two months. Don't you even want to say goodbye?"
[softly] "Goodbye."
Although this one was one of the more prescient.
"All I'm saying is, y'all are never gonna get tired of us.
We're like the Sopranos in a pickup truck.
We got scandals and crimes out there y'all don't even know about yet."
During the Bush years, the media mostly moved on from the humor of the Lewinsky era,
with now-Senator Clinton allowed to just, you know, exist as another senator.
...Some of the time.
With the exception of that honeymooners dynamic that still popped up on occasion.
"I was in meetings all day."
"Bill!!"
"Uh-oh!"
In this 2005 episode of Robot Chicken for instance, Monica Lewinsky jokes apparently aren't super-dated!
Ah, but then came the 2008 presidential primary,
and with Bill no longer really relevant, shit starts getting weird again,
most notably in a 2007 episode of South Park called The Snuke,
in which terrorists manage to plant a nuclear bomb, well...
"Well, in her..."
"In her what?"
"In her snatch, sir."
Hillary doesn't really have a personality, per se,
or an impersonation, really.
[heavy Southern accent] "Oh, my!"
Where did that come from?
"Oh my!"
Senator Southern Belle.
But she does have a big butt and a horrible man-eating vagina,
because old women are gross, am I right?
She also shows up in the Simpsons movie as Itchy's VP.
And she seems pretty happy about it, too.
But despite her depictions growing more and more independent of Bill,
the my-doofus-husband dynamic isn't completely gone.
We see it again in a 2007 episode of Mind of Mencia,
only this time Bill is secretly running things behind her back and using his womanizing as a front.
[prostitute] "Your wife is coming!"
"We can't let her know we're saving the world behind her back. So you're gonna have to get on this desk
and spread them for free."
I guess this counts as an inversion of what we saw in the 90s.
But the most memorable iteration of this era was Amy Poehler's Hillary on Saturday Night Live.
"Someone so annoying, so pushy,
so grating, so bossy, and shrill, with a personality so unpleasant."
To-date SNL's longest-running Hillary, and there have been quite a few.
There were some sketches which were more sympathetic,
even during the primary, because this was back when Obama was the new hotness to the point of parody.
"Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama."
But the joke with Poehler's Hillary is that she's cold and conniving and will say anything to get elected.
"I'm not going to reverse my stance on the war a second time.
...Unless of course they want me to."
And also her bottomless ambition is a joke.
"Is there anyone in the [bleep]-ing country who didn't know I was running for president?!
"I've been running for president since I was five!"
The real deal did show up at one point after a sketch, and it was really pretty awkward
because it was so obviously tacked-on at the last minute
after a sketch that was not terribly sympathetic to her.
"Because I simply adore Amy's impression of me."
[Poehler] "Oh, my ears are ringing!"
Poehler's Hillary was really deeply unsympathetic during the 08 primary.
"I am a sore loser."
But as soon as she wasn't running anymore that changed pretty quick.
"We are crossing party lines to address the now very ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign."
"An issue which I am frankly surprised to hear people suddenly care about."
This also correlates with the trend that Hillary's approval ratings are generally pretty high,
you know, as long as she's not running for office.
"I didn't want a woman to be president.
I wanted to be president, and I just happen to be a woman!"
But then after that came Hillary as Secretary of State which kind of gave rise to the
trend of Hillary the angry, embittered badass.
"Nice to talk to you, Barack."
"[bleep] you, dream-stealer!"
"Damn. Some people is just... too angry."
Oh yeah, and MADtv is trying to be around again and it's...
still pretty bad.
"And Hillary, what did you say was your biggest pet peeve with Bill?"
Hey, 1998 called, they want you to stop stealing their even-then-unfunny jokes.
Vanessa Bayer took over for Poehler on SNL.
"It turns me on when you deceive the American public!"
"Then you must be turned on 24/7!"
And like her character in Train Wreck, her Hillary is more
awkwardly smiley than cold and conniving.
"Stop smiling.
That's even more."
But then, finally, Kate McKinnon
descended from her cloud of sparkles and light to take over as Hillary in residence on SNL.
"I wasn't born yesterday.
I was born 67 years ago,
and I have been planning on being president ever since."
A performance which would help her win an Emmy.
"Thank you Ellen Degeneres, thank you Hillary Clinton, um..."
[applause, cheering]
Unlike Poehler's Hillary, McKinnon's is more defiant.
"Eleven hours, baby.
They couldn't break me and they never will."
She plays Hillary as less a calculating politician than a Saturday morning cartoon villain from the 80s.
"Citizens, you will elect me! I will be your leader!"
She kind of reminds me of Invader Zim.
"Lord of humans! I will rule you all with an iron fist!"
"Why won't the people just let me lead?"
Maybe that's why she's my favorite of the SNL Hillarys.
"I will destroy him and I will mount his hair in the Oval Office!"
Real Hillary came back again, but this time it was actually charming instead of awkward
because it wasn't a tacked-on puff-piece,
but an actually written out sketch.
"You are really easy to talk to, Val."
"Oh thanks, you know, that's the first time I've ever heard that."
That, albeit lovingly, dares to call her out on her record.
"It really is great how long you've supported gay marriage."
"Yes. ...I could have supported it sooner."
"Well, you did it pretty soon."
"Eh... could've been sooner."
Kate McKinnon, best Hillary, long may she reign.
"Because I've got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here you are stuck in the middle with me!"
[applause, cheering]
There's no consistency with Hillary's imitators. Look at someone like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush,
"Strategery."
Or Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin,
"It just goes to show that anyone can be president."
"Anyone. Anyone!"
There's an attempt to capture their inflection, not so with Hillary.
Even career Imitator Teresa Barnwell doesn't really capture her affect or manner of speaking.
Ana Gasteyer waffled between actual impression,
"The new Hillary is motherly and warm-"
and generic angry woman, but was more often the latter.
Kate McKinnon's was more of an impression at first before it eventually
evolved into the cartoon villain Hillary.
"But as a relatable woman on a couch, hello! Ha, ha, ha...!"
In a discussion on celebrity impressions back in the 90s, Dana Carvey once said that by the end of his tenure on
SNL, his George Bush impression had basically turned into an impression of the original impression.
"400,000 brave Americans await my order to annihilate Iraq."
And you see that in the Hillarys, especially Poehler's and McKinnon's.
"Yes it does, my sister-friend!"
They aren't really impersonating a person, but an idea of a person.
"I invite the media to grow a pair.
And if you can't, I will lend you mine."
But what is that idea?
Actually, you know what, don't answer that.