Should Obama return to SNL?

Rumor has it that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will return to Saturday Night Live on Nov. 1, said Mary Katharine Ham in The Weekly Standard online. (Click here for an NBC video of Obama on SNL in 2007.) If so, “here's hoping” they have a “comic wedgie prepared” for him. Probably not, though: “We're more likely in for a barrage of knee-slapping pseudo-parodic exaggerations of Obama's total awesomeness.”

This could turn into an Obama love-fest, said Rachel Sklar in The Huffington Post. SNL producer Lorne Michaels contributed to Obama’s campaign, and the host for the Nov. 1 show is “über-Democrat Ben Affleck, who hosted a fundraiser for Obama last March.” But going for laughs three days before the election is risky—Obama has “more to lose from an SNL appearance than he does to gain from it.”

Maybe, but it could be “the cherry on top of a media blitz sundae that will include his primetime Oct. 29, half-hour TV special on NBC, CBS, and Fox,” said Allison Waldman in AOL’s TV Squad. Lorne Michaels should “be fair to the Republicans, too,” by asking “John McCain to tape a segment and show that on the same episode that Obama's on.”

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