Fred Armisen Is SNL’s Barack Obama?

11:25 pm EST February 23rd, 2008 | News | 6 Comments

Putting aside the fact that I historically have not found him funny, you really mean that Saturday Night Live was unable to find a single funny black guy?

UPDATE: And, not only was the selection kind of insulting — his Obama impression sucks.

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6 Responses to “Fred Armisen Is SNL’s Barack Obama?”

  1. riffle says:
    February 24, 2008 at 10:34 am

    Yeah, SNL is largely unfunny and Armisen fits right in. His “impressions” are generally abysmal, too.

    And the Obama impression continues this tradition.

    Maybe they’ll haul out that latin-percussionist character they tried to drill into the public for so many episodes before they realized that people weren’t laughing. And for good reason–it wasn’t funny.

  2. August J. Pollak says:
    February 24, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Nothing wrong with a white guy playing Obama if he does a good impression- but this wasn’t a good impression. The greater problem is SNL’s lack of an overall black male cast to begin with- they have one black man right now, who is clearly physically incapable of playing Obama. I’m having flashbacks to the late 90′s, where Tim Meadows was playing every single black character to the degree that they did one sketch mocking the fact that he had to play two different celebrities at the same time.

    The best person in the last few seasons to play Obama would have been Maya Rudolph, unfortunately she left the cast last season.

  3. Beano says:
    February 24, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    A comic from Austin, TX named Mike MacRae does a dead-on Obama – voice, mannerisms, the whole package. Seriously, it is like he channels Obama!

    I can’t watch Fred Armisen do this impression again. I will turn off the t.v.

  4. SpiderJ says:
    February 25, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    Laziness, plain and simple. If they had really wanted to expend the effort, they could have found a comedian or improviser somewhere who could pull this off more credibly.

  5. versatol says:
    March 11, 2008 at 2:47 am

    Yeah. His impression sucks. It is as if he is trying to make Barack out to be an incapable idiot when the guy is clearly one of the most articulate and determined nominees we’ve ever seen. Armisen looks like Barack when I squint but the sound is waay off. Damn it Michaels, can’t you hire a few black people rather than have Kenan Thomas dress like women and Maya Rudoloh play 6 different races.

  6. chris mathison says:
    October 16, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    God fred armisen sucks at impressions and is a terrible SNL obama, i can barely watch the show anymore