President Reagan Mastermind

"Saturday Night Live". President Reagan Mastermind. NBC. Studio H8, New York. December 6, 1986.

This sketch is from the 1986 season of Saturday night Live. Since its start in 1975, SNL has established a reputation for cultural  spoofs, eccentric live performance (now on a slight time delay), and hard hitting political humor. In this clip from season twelve of the show's production, and depicts Phil Hartman performing as Ronald Reagan, and was aired during the heat of the Iran-Contra affair, which was brought to the media only a month beforehand. The political history of the united states could very easily be charted by Saturday Night Live, particularly in the last year with the recent presidential campaigns having been placed in the media forefront. However, as this clip shows, SNL's taste for sharp political and cultural humor was entirely alive and biting before the modern day. In this skit, Reagan is depicted as being a criminal mastermind, and satirical themes revolve around the government's professed ignorance of the event at that time, Reagan's gentle and noble household image, his pre-presidential history as an actor, and the state of foreign affairs and wars in the middle east. The concept that our government wouldn't know about donating money and weapons to armed forces in proxy wars in the middle east, could be construed as being equally inane as having a president that is a corrupt, multilingual, evil genius with a cover up operation. At this time the show held so much media weight, that Ronald Reagan actually intended to be a guest host, but cancelled due to an overlapping debate.