Sarah Palin on SNL: 'I know that they portrayed me as an idiot, and I hated that'

Saturday Night Live has been on TV for nearly 40 years, but the series has rarely entered the zeitgeist with as much impact as it did when Tina Fey played 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a series of scathing sketches. Fey's dim-bulb impression of Palin became so iconic that some have speculated it had a real impact on the outcome of the actual 2008 presidential election.

Six years later, what does Sarah Palin think about the impression? "I think SNL is egotistical if they believe that [Fey's impression] was truly an effect on maybe the public debate about who should lead the country in the next four years," says Palin in a book excerpt at The Hollywood Reporter.

That doesn't mean, of course, that Palin was thrilled with Fey's riff on her persona: "I know that they portrayed me as an idiot, and I hated that, and I wanted to come on the show and counter some of that."

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With the 2008 election long past, how does Palin feel about Fey? "If I ran into Tina Fey again today, I would say: 'You need to at least pay for my kids' braces or something from all the money that you made off of pretending that you're me!'" Palin says. "'My goodness, you capitalized on that! Can't you contribute a little bit? Jeez!'" --Scott Meslow