Tina Fey Should Take Advantage of the Opportunity

I guess SNL alum and current NBC sitcom star Tina Fey just has too much money and fame right now.

Fey herself, who has gotten so much attention for her impression of Palin on "Saturday Night Live," said she hopes the VP hopeful will be out of her life very soon.

"I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5, so if anyone could help me be done playing her on Nov. 5, that would be good for me," Fey said, adding that she was totally resistant in acknowledging her uncanny physical resemblance to Palin until her young daughter turned on the TV and teased "that's mummy."

She's the perfect person to impersonate Sarah Palin. Her work in the first SNL effort a week ago was spot on, though they make a mistake in playing Palin as an idiot. If she played her as the tough working mom she is, especially in a skit where she terrorizes an actor playing Barack Obama, the impersonation would work much better. Right now she's playing to hard to the left to get the maximum benefit of the role.

She's a versatile actress and certainly doesn't want to get typecast as Palin, but there's really not much chance of that. She should take the opportunity that God has given her and run with it rather than have a lefty tantrum. Who knows, she might have the chance to play her for a long, long time.

Of course, there can be risks if an actor is too associated with a specific role. Ever heard of a guy named Vaughn Meader? When I was a young lad we had a comedy record put out by him that was very popular. Here's what Wikipedia says about that album:

On October 22, 1962, Meader joined writers Bob Booker and Earle Doud and a small cast of entertainers and recorded The First Family, which would become the fastest-selling record in the United States. By that Christmas, one million copies of the album had been sold; by the following year, it had sold an astonishing 7.5 million copies—unprecedented for any album, let alone a comedy album.

In his 20s, Meader was suddenly famous, rich, and in constant demand. He was profiled in Time and Life magazines, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and played to packed houses in Las Vegas.

At the time, many Americans could recite favorite lines from the record (including "the rubber schwan [swan] is mine," and "move ahead ... with great vigah [vigor]," the latter lampooning the President's own words). The album poked fun at Kennedy's PT-109 history; the rocking chairs he used for his back pain; the Kennedy clan's well-known athleticism, football games and family togetherness; children in the White House; and Jackie Kennedy's soft-spoken nature and her redecoration of the White House; among many other bits of knowledge that the public consumed voraciously.

The parody was fairly good-natured. Kennedy himself was said to have given copies of the albums as Christmas gifts, and once greeted a Democratic National Committee group by saying, "Vaughn Meader was busy tonight, so I came myself."[1] At one press conference, Kennedy was asked if the album had produced "annoyment [sic] or enjoyment." He jokingly responded, "I listened to Mr. Meader's record and, frankly, I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me. So, now he's annoyed."[2]

Meader later revealed, "A lot of people don't know this, but we recorded The First Family on the night of October 22, 1962, the same night as John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missle Crisis Speech. The audience was in the studio and had no idea of the drama that was taking place. But the cast had heard the speech and our throats almost dropped to our toes, because if the audience had heard the Cuban Missile Speech, we would not have received the reaction we did."

The First Family album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1963. That March, Meader recorded a follow-up album, The First Family Volume Two, a combination of spoken comedy and songs performed by actors and comedians portraying members of the President's family and White House staff.

Assassination aftermath

After John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas, in November, 1963, sales of The First Family albums plummeted, and stores removed the records from their shelves as the nation went into mourning. Meader and others commented through the years that the assassin's (presumed to be Lee Harvey Oswald) bullet killed not only Kennedy, but also Meader (or, Meader's career). His act was no longer in demand and even appearances that were already booked—including those for the Grammy Awards show, the Joey Bishop show, and To Tell the Truth—were canceled.

According to several sources, avant-garde comedian Lenny Bruce appeared at a New York nightclub the day of Kennedy's assassination. As if testing his audience's readiness to find something funny so soon after tragedy, Bruce was silent for several moments before announcing, "Vaughn Meader is screwed!"

My dad an I used to quote lines from the album to each other around the house. It was very funny, but instantly not funny after Nov. 22, 1963.

Advice to Tina Fey - don't turn down a good opportunity. 30 Rock is flying high right now but that won't last forever. And note that the Meader album was "fairly good natured". That will always be funnier than "mean and nasty".