Nathan Lane, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick.

The reverberation of dinner chimes echoed through the stairwell of the Plaza as a tardy Shindigger rushed up the steps to the 28th Annual Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Awards on Monday evening. And there we found what we like to call a “celebrity boil,” as a multitude of cameramen and reporters besieged a trio of thespian besties: Sarah Jessica Parker, hubby Matthew Broderick and the evening’s performing arts honoree, Nathan Lane.

While the petite and camera-ready SJP graciously posed and purred in her vintage Oscar de la Renta dress, her husband looked on sheepishly and Mr. Lane seemed somewhat overwhelmed.

“It’s been a lot of hard work,” Mr. Lane told Shindigger about starring in the upcoming production of Douglas Carter Beane’s new play, The Nance, which begins previews on March 21. “We’re now going in our fourth week of the rehearsal.”

Would the legendary comedic actor be taking refuge from the Broadway stage this summer in the Hamptons, we wondered?

“I’m not going to be getting out there a lot,” he replied. Right now, he was simply enjoying the moment. “I actually didn’t even know [Guild Hall] gave awards. I didn’t know I was up for one!”

Lifetime achievement awards sound stuffy. And yet this affair was anything but. Snatching a glass of cabernet sauvignon, Shindigger assessed the environment of high-society doyennes and dapper men. The energy was regal, but loose. The profound waft of money in the room was overpowering, but inclusive. These were the mighty East Enders—patrons of the arts—and they were beyond marvelous.

Better yet: they knew it!

As the first course was served, the evening’s master of ceremonies, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman, welcomed Lorne Michaels and Dan Aykroyd to the stage in order to present the lifetime achievement award for visual arts to John Alexander.

“Don’t let that East Texas accent fool ya,” joked Mr. Aykroyd, handing over the prize to the American landscape artist. “John is one of the most intelligent and sensitive, semi-articulate Texans on the planet.”

The razzing continued as writer/critic Ken Auletta presented the honor for literary arts to biographer Walter Isaacson.

“He’s also a little weird,” Mr. Auletta began. “He only urinates once a week ... He owns 15 identical suits and one tie.” (Setting the record straight, Mr. Isaacson told the crowd that “only about a third of that was true.”)

During a pause for dinner, Shindigger decided to wander the ballroom. We interrupted Carl Spielvogel, who was lecturing Cristina Greeven Cuomo about the greatness of America and the importance of international diplomacy.

“I have been going to the Hamptons since I was the premeditated thought of my parents,” giggled Ms. Cuomo, the editor in chief of Manhattan magazine, patting her tiered-lace Chanel dress. “Southampton is my hamlet! I love it out there.”

Of everyone present, Ms. Cuomo confessed that tonight she was most excited to be in the company of Mr. Michaels. “I’m a huge closet comedy fan. I love everything he does. 30 Rock—I can’t believe it’s over! Devastating,” She said, adding that her soon-to-launch glossy rag, Beach, is “going to have a great sense of humor.”

Before Shindigger could table dance anymore, Mr. Brickman was back at the podium. “I’m Nathan Lane. Don’t fuck with me! I’m a professional,” he teased, before recalling several entertaining experiences with Mr. Lane from their time spent working on the commercially successful disaster that was The Addams Family. He then handed the stage over to Tony-award winning director Jack O’Brien, who delivered a less profanity-laden introduction and presented Mr. Lane with his plaque.

(Meanwhile, Shindigger noticed an exceedingly late arrival, as the endearingly lissome Blythe Danner slipped her way to a head table.)

Rounding out the awards, Alec Baldwin presented a special award for leadership and philanthropic endeavors to former investment banker, American Ballet Theatre trustee and Guild Hall chairman Melville “Mickey” Straus, whom power publicist Peggy Siegal described as “the bravest person in the room.”

“He’s the most loved,” she said.

Shindigger passed on dessert but eagerly refilled our wine, as our tablemate, gala co-chair and c/o Hotels owner Jenny Ljungberg, explained one of the organization’s goals moving forward.

“[We want] to get a younger crowd to come to Guild Hall,” she said. “It has sort of a stuffy connotation and a stuffy feel, even though their offerings are anything but stuffy.”

To help further Ms. Ljungberg’s cause, Shindigger approached Ms. Parker and demanded to know if she had introduced her little ones to Guild Hall.

“We try to see and do as much as they offer, as much as life with children allows,” she said.

As the night was coming to a close, Shindigger swung by the bar for a final refill. Ms. Danner had the same idea, and so we asked why she had been so late.

“I was doing an Actors Fund benefit,” she explained with a smile. “I was the stage manager of the first act of Our Town, and then B.D. Wong is the second, and S. Epatha Merkerson is it in. She’s wonderful! We were laughing and laughing and having a good time, but I was able to slip away.”

We then babbled on about her summer plans and her return to Broadway. “I took over for Estelle Parsons,” she told us. “I’m going to be Matthew Broderick’s mother. It’s a whole new cast!”

Which sounded like nice work, if you can get it.

In 2004, Ms. Lohan appeared with her Mean Girls costars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a "Weekend Update" segment, during which the comics held a fake intervention for her youthful high spirits and she defended herself against charges of not eating. She concluded by threatening to visit host Colin Farrell's dressing room. She had previously hosted the show that year with a monologue wherein she mocked her fellow teen stars Hilary Duff and Avril Lavigne, as well as her own and others' habit for revealing a bit too much of her body.

Ms. Lohan and Ms. Fey were publicly friends in 2004, appearing together in palling-around fashion on talk shows. By Ms. Lohan's second hosting gig in 2005, Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler held a non-joking intervention backstage; Ms. Fey's writing staff also wrote a monologue for Ms. Lohan in which she confronted her future self, having been ravaged by drug and alcohol use. Funny stuff!

Ms. Lohan got one last hosting shot in 2006, just before Ms. Fey left the show. In a cold open, Ms. Lohan--who was not promoting any current projects, with A Prairie Home Companion still months away, played a "mean girl" White House staffer, coasting on fond 2004 memories.

By the 2010s, with Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler departed, hosts Emma Stone and Miley Cyrus took to impersonate an easy target in the form of Ms. Lohan, with Ms. Cyrus claiming "the Los Angeles Courthouse just gave me my own parking spot." It is with her upcoming hosting job, for which Ms. Lohan reportedly lobbied producer Lorne Michaels, that Ms. Lohan hopes to reclaim her own image. The show had long documented her trajectory, after all, and appearing on the show once more means there is a trajectory at all upon which to comment.

An hour after the weekly 3:30 a.m. text message spread like spitfire across New York, interns and set crew and assistants arrived at Professor Thom's, a sports bar in the East Village, with outfits assembled and the password for the door on the tips of their tongues. They had heard stories, of the cast members and guest hosts and the rockers who played the stage at 30 Rockefeller Center, and their assorted flashy pals, basking in drug cornucopia and cigarette smoke, a haze that lingered long after last call anywhere else in the city. It was the after-party for last week's Saturday Night Live, but the wild past seems no longer the norm.

These things end earlier now. By the time the creative underclass showed up to that corner of Second Avenue and barked out the password--"Mr. Cluck's Chuckle Shack"--The Observer had already endured the backstage antics of the show's fleet of bedheaded writers, the encore Paul Simon performances, the madhouse that is 30 Rock as guests scramble around the labyrinthine studios, and a massive all-show dinner that took over McCormick & Schmick's midtown digs.

A writer had invited us along, knowing that trying to get in as press would be impossible.

The narrow halls of 30 Rock's ninth floor are such that The Observer had to physically dodge every person they had ever laughed at in their lives. Seth Meyers, pacing and going over lines. Kristen Wiig, her elastic gumby face stone-cold as make-up artists caked on the powder. Lorne Michaels, shifting his paunch from soundboards to dressing rooms, which stretch down the hall from the viewing parties and reek conspicuously of cigarettes and weed.

And also: Josh Brolin, why are you thumbs-over-lips making out with Zach Galifianakis? Maya Rudolph, bride in this weekend's titular Bridesmaids, who knew you were very, very much expecting? And Morgan Spurlock, why are you here?

"I'm going to tap your leg," said the SNL writer who ushered us in to the city's most press-embargoed area, "whenever one of my jokes is coming up."

The show began and those who write the jokes sat on beat-up couches with clutter wedged between the cushions, the screen airing the show they had written--or rather were still writing; they cut and revise skits as they air. The temperament is that of calibrated frenzy, a free-for-all of creative modes smashing against each other.

Fred Armisen ducked out of a room and into a corner, emerging in the green vest, ready to pop up on Weekend Update.

Snatching a beer from the well-stocked coolers required navigating through the cast of The Office. And naturally, when The Observer ran into Jack McBrayer, we came close to asking him which way to the writers room--was he not Kenneth, an NBC page?

Then the host, Ed Helms, called the cast back on stage for the final bow, saxophones wailing behind them, as The Observer took a spot downstairs between indie darling Greta Gerwig and the guy who played Hurley on Lost, to snag a spot to see Mr. Simon close his set with "Kodachrome." iPhones went aloft, snapping pictures, and everyone decamped for the first of the parties.

"It's kind of a corporate thing," the writer announced as we walked into McCormick & Schmick's with Aziz Ansari and Jason Sudeikis.

"Great story everybody--John Mayer's here," the writer's agent said.

"We were at dinner, but we're gonna watch it later. I'm a late cat," Mr. Mayer told The Observer at the bar in the basement.

The singer has been maligned for his over-sharing habits with reporters, and for a while he zipped it up, but tonight his head was almost swallowing the recorder, lest he not be heard.

"I'm a big fan of everyone! I love everybody!" he said.

"They wanted to give me a line and I was like 'No! Don't!' It's funnier if I don't have a line!" said Chris Colfer, the Glee star.

"It's a little distracting in the writers room," said Mr. Galifinakis, whom had been watching the show with The Observer. He had foam-padding, outdated headphones strung around his neck. "I'm sure it translated well."

"I was actually leaving," said Andy Samberg, with his harp-plucking girlfriend Joanna Newsom.

To Professor Thom's, for the after party?

Mr. Samberg paused.

"Thinking about it."

He didn't show up, leaving the eye-batting interns to chain smoke in a corner, but by that time it was well into Sunday anyway.

nfreeman@observer.com

Zucker's current work in media, however, is a bit up in the air. Last month he was pushed out of his position atop NBC by the incoming Comcast brass, and has not yet announced his next move. Some have predicted that the one-time boy wonder of NBC programming will take a stab at running for office.

The Hollywood Reporter said that the event will be held at The Pierre, and will be attended by Lorne Michaels, Katie Couric, Mark Feuerstein and Brian Williams, among others. The speeches are traditionally in "roast" style, meaning we're particularly excited for Mr. Williams' minutes on the podium. If the hidden wit he's shown on "30 Rock" and "The Daily Show" comes through, his remarks should be a treat.

nfreeman@observer.com

Twitter: @NFreeman1234

Mr. McCartney, wearing a lightweight European aristo scarf indoors, was accompanied by his lady friend, M.T.A. board member Nancy Shevell, who has been publicly scolded lately for skipping budget meetings while cavorting across the pond in England with her new beau.

“Together now!” a scrum of photographers yelped at the pair. Ms. Shevell gave Mr. McCartney a pouty look, but then scurried up next to him anyway, posing for photos in her violet minidress and curious, sparkle-covered nude leggings, which seemed to recall the singer Britney Spears’ outfit at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.

“We recycle, I drive a hybrid, and we’re vegetarian, which the United Nations recently said is the single most effective thing an individual can do because of cattle-rearing and its effects on the environment,” opined Mr. McCartney. “I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years,” he added, “and I’m now only 37!” (He’s actually 66.)

Around the room, other guests were discussing their own minor contributions to the environmental movement, too. “Our daughter has us using recycled toilet paper!” the Daily Transom overheard one man exclaim to his dinner companion.

A number of powerful moguls attended, including financier Ron Perelman, former Viacom president Tom Freston, IAC chairman Barry Diller and IMG honcho Ted Forstmann—the latter two, accompanied by Diane von Furstenberg and Padma Lakshmi, respectively. Also present were several SNL cast members invited by their boss, Lorne Michaels, who bought a table that evening. (30 Rock star Alec Baldwin served as emcee for the event.)

“We fell asleep, rolled out of bed and rolled into here,” said comedian Fred Armisen, with Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss on his arm.

“We’re going to L.A. soon and we’re going to get our little hybrid cars—that’s our big move,” Ms. Moss told the Daily Transom. “But,” she added, turning to Mr. Armisen, “we’re pretty good, right?”

“Yeah,” he chimed in, “and we’re pretty recycle-y.”

Do they wish they were greener? “I always buy new clothes and then I throw them away, so I’d like to start reusing them,” joked Mr. Armisen. “I never do the laundry. Really expensive suits—right in the garbage!”

Nearby, fellow SNL standout Seth Meyers was making his way inside. “My boss invited me,” he told the Daily Transom. Invited or told? “No, he asks me. He’s powerful enough to know that asking will do the trick.”

Mr. Meyers said his carbon footprint has been relatively small. “I don’t have a driver’s license right now so I can’t burn any gas, and anytime I turn on my air conditioner, it blows the fuse,” he noted. “My prewar apartment building has very strong feelings about being green.”

What else can he do to help? “I am only going to have sex with the light off!” Mr. Meyers pledged.

Ms. McCartney, the evening’s honoree, teetered in right before the dinner began in a royal blue, sheer-topped dress. The Transom wondered what, if anything, is most frustrating for the eco-conscious designer.

“The meat industry!” she replied. “It’s responsible for all the carbon emissions during its worldwide transport.”

Ms. McCartney’s father suddenly dashed toward her holding up his cellular phone like a tape recorder to mock the reporters lining up to speak with her.

“But, what do you think about the environment?” demanded Mr. McCartney in a silly Irish accent.

“No more questions, no more questions!” she shrieked at him to play along. After which, father and daughter posed together for photos and retreated inside.

It might sound crazy to even suggest that someone as famous as Justin Timberlake would ever be a cast member on Saturday Night Live. But since he's already appearing more than some of the actual cast members (ahem, Bobby Moynihan), it seems like a distinct possibility. In fact, we think the argument could easily be made that Mr. Timberlake is as good, or better, than every other current male cast member when it comes to participating in sketch comedy. Only Bill Hader seems to possess the same levels of versatility and hilarity that Mr. Timberlake has in his arsenal. When JT (we can call him that because we go way back) appears in a skit, it isn't as a stunt; he's not there to play himself in a walk-on appearance just hoping to get a huge applause. Quite the opposite: He's almost always in character and willing to do whatever it takes to get a laugh. This includes putting on a leotard and high-heels as one of Beyoncé's backup dancers

We're not saying that Mr. Michaels should build the entire show around Mr. Timberlake, Will Ferrell-circa-1999 style, but why not give him "featuring" status? That way fans can watch each week hoping that Mr. Timberlake will appear, but no promises are made. And if he's busy working on his next album, or just wants to stay at home and watch something On Demand with girlfriend Jessica Biel, he doesn't feel the pressure to show up at all. We're sure that getting just 10 appearances per year from Mr. Timberlake would help boost Saturday Night Live's sagging post-presidential-election ratings, at least until another presidential election cycle starts up in two years. Now, if NBC could only find a way to get him on Chuck…

Now it seems Mr. Michaels is hoping to use that same formula for Jimmy Fallon and his upcoming job as Conan O'Brien's replacement on Late Night. Starting tonight and continuing until Mr. Fallon officially takes over for Mr. O'Brien in early March, NBC.com will be premiering original content each night at 12:30 a.m. as a preview for the new Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. While Mr. Fallon won't be doing actual talk shows, the 34-year-old comedian will vary what each segment focuses on nightly, allowing for everything from behind-the-scenes looks at his stand-up gigs to trips around his new Late Night offices.

Whether or not you happen to think Mr. Fallon is a good replacement for Mr. O'Brien (and we kinda think he is), you can see why this is a good idea. Beta testing a comedy show online and getting instantaneous reactions seems like the perfect way for Mr. Fallon, or anyone else, to launch into vicious world of late night television. And since each video will only be five minutes, the chances of one or more of them going viral during the next few months are highly increased. NBC couldn't buy publicity that good! We've been waiting for a network to attempt this type of maneuver with their programming, but as yet, it seems only the Peacock has had the foresight enough to do it. With endless amount of original web content available for shows like The Office, 30 Rock and Heroes, the network is light years ahead of the competition when it comes to using the internet to promote their product. Now if they could only figure out a way to translate that into actual Nielsen viewers...

Q: For years now, shows like Meet the Press have been broadcasting clips of an SNL sketch, a spoof of political reality, to have a conversation with their audience about the actual political reality. How are you getting to the core ingredients of what’s going on in a way that people like Tom Brokaw can’t seem to articulate?

A: I think they’d like to make sarcastic comments about candidates, but their role as news people prevents that, so I think showing our clips permits them to let us make the point.

I think it would be awkward for even some of the people on cable to be as out-and-out mocking as we can be, and I also think it sort of makes their shows more entertaining—they can do it for free. It’s like a minute of each show that they get for free and at least they can sort of skim the cream of our pieces. But you know, it’s nice to be noticed.

Of course, it’s selective what they show. Just by way of digression, I think I first noticed this whole phenomenon during the 2000 election.

Q. This was when ‘strategery’ came into the lexicon?

A: Yes, the Bush-Gore debate pieces which were written about in The Times because the Gore campaign staff showed him the sketches as an instructional tool, say, see this is how you can be caricatured if you act that way, and that led to his reaction in the second debate where he was way too passive. They were running my stuff all the time on all of the network news channels and each of the big three—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—would from the same sketch mine different elements. CNN always took the most left-leaning elements of my piece, Fox the most right-leaning, and MSNBC was kind of down the middle. That’s changed now. CNN has become the middle of the road and MSNBC the left.

Q. Tina Fey’s been a major figure this year, as Sarah Palin, right?

A. I knew who Sarah Palin was because I read the Almanac of American Politics but until I heard her speak, which almost no one had outside of Alaska, I had no idea she had that sort of upper Midwest mom accent. So after she was picked, everyone I’ve ever met in my life was calling me going, Oh, you’ve got to have Tina Fey. I said, I get it, because they both wear glasses. I thought if that was all there was to it, you could put any number of women in that hair and the glasses and you’d have your Sarah Palin. But the key thing about Tina was, she’s a really great subtle performer and she can also do that voice. I’ve heard her do that voice, and some of us within the show, we were struck that this would be something Tina could do and only 5 percent of it was the glasses. Tina was saying it’s a voice she did onstage in Second City. It’s an American voice, a Midwestern mom.

Q. Your sketches have actually had some impact on the 2008 election.

A. You know, one of my biggest peeves in life is what Dave Letterman and I used to talk about—he used to term it derisively ‘important comedy.’ It was how annoying it was that there were comics who would start to think of themselves as important forces for good, such as Lenny Bruce, that kind of thing. We always shared a contempt for that.

Q. How did that Obama-Hillary debate sketch come about?

A. The idea was that come hell or high water, when we returned from the strike, we were going to open with a debate piece, and I was sort of the guy who does those. I had had my own observations about how the Democratic primary had been shaping up beginning in the late fall, and after we came back from the strike in late February, Obama had won the Iowa caucuses and Hillary had to make a comeback in New Hampshire. It seemed to me that there were two things that had sort of emerged in the preceding four months. On the one hand, a sort of a hard-on for Hillary that the press had—just really enjoyed her frustration and her discomfiture and faltering. That was a very sort of cynical, kind of snarky attitude but at the same time there was a reverential attitude about the Obama campaign. It’s the kind of thing that was later to manifest itself with like that Rolling Stone cover, which was almost like the kind of thing you see in South America, of party leaders or Jesus or something. You know, the kind of covers without any caption or anything?

Q. After that debate sketch, Hillary Clinton mentioned it during an actual debate. That make you feel at all exploited?

A. No, I don’t feel exploited. It was more of the fact that media seemed to acknowledge a truth there that made me feel slightly flattered. I could understand how Hillary wanted people to see the sketch. It was the sort of thing that made the press want to report on it—is the press in the tank for Obama? Joe Klein had a thing in Time about the SNL effect. And I know from within—I have indirect connections with the Obama campaign and less so with the Hillary campaign—but a guy I know who’s a political pollster and does campaigns told me that the Hillary people certainly loved that piece and they thought it sort of saved their campaign. I was just trying to write a funny piece and say something that wasn’t crazy.

Q. What about Tina and Amy doing that “Go Bitches” thing on Weekend Update?

A. That was something that Tina came in with—she was hosting that week. It was news to me on Saturday. I can see how if you look for a common theme between my piece and that, you might go, wow, the show’s really jumped on board the Hillary campaign. But I sort of interpreted that piece as more of a premise piece, like it was a girl-power thing they were doing and not to be read literally. It was more like the Tina Fey character and the Amy Poehler character doing a ‘that’s right, deal with it’ pro-Hillary thing and not the show doing an endorsement. I mean, I don’t have anything against Hillary Clinton, but I certainly wasn’t trying to help her in my piece.

Q. What do you sense going on now in American politics now in terms of symbols, rhetoric compared to campaigns in the past?

A. One thing I’ve noticed different, and I’m not the only one, although it’s not written about very much—with Sarah Palin, you’ve got like the first sort of authentic blue-collar person running for president. Everybody who’s ever run for president have all sort of been from the same political class and they tend to be well educated, went to good schools, or else over time in Washington got some polish. But we’ve never had anyone who talks like Sarah Palin, which is to say talks like a Midwestern mom. I mean, Obama’s going to win anyway, but if this were a close race, this has to be something for his supporters to step on some people over, but a lot of the criticism of Sarah Palin has taken on just a pure class thing, and it’s sophisticates shitting on the declassé.

Q. What is the comic essence of her?

A. I would argue that what the show has addressed is more to some extent issue positions, but I don’t think we’ve embraced a shitting on her because of her class. That’s something I pick up in conversations with people—‘Can you believe that kind of fucking trailer-trash kind of thing?’ It’s more just Manhattan yuppies in general. But the way she’s been made fun of at the show is more the way she doesn’t think that well on her feet, and she’s been heavily programmed—although I suspect they should’ve left her alone, because she seems to do much better with people one-on-one. I’ve never heard anything come out of Alaska that as governor, she was constantly locked in on five talking points and relentlessly answered every question with reference to the same talking points. It seems to me that she was regarded as more or less a normal human being in Alaska. But to me the funniest moment of any of Tina’s impressions was in the debate piece with Biden—would you like to respond to Senator Biden? ‘No, thank you!’

Q. Would it surprise you if Sarah Palin winds up going on the show?

A. It would. I’m always surprised when candidates go in the show. I wasn’t as surprised when Obama went on, because I knew that he knew he didn’t have that much to fear from us. And of course, they’re never going to have to do anything they [don’t want] to do. I mean we can’t make them—they don’t work for us, so we can’t say, ‘Hey, that’s the script, Jack, read it as written.’

Q. How about the comic essence of the other two?

A. With McCain, to me it’s been—it’s the same word that Obama’s been using, his campaign seems very erratic and just jumping from gimmick to gimmick. I addressed this in a debate piece I wrote; there seems to be a lot of stunts involved. I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t have a few things that he could point out. He could talk about that some of the things on the Obama agenda are well to the left of anything the American people have ever knowingly voted for. It seems like he’s doing it day by day or week by week. What was always funniest about Biden was just the pomposity combined with the gaffes. And his vice presidential debate, there were a number of preposterous things he said that, I’m sorry to say, weren’t really fact-checked very well by the media. And Biden is a very mellifluous and smooth speaker, but he has never really been tested in an environment where he’s been challenged on positions he’s taken because he’s always had runaway victories in Delaware and has never been pressed closely.

Q. So she’s obviously the most inherently funny one.

A. Oh, absolutely. Palin far and away has the most to work with, because for one thing she’s got that voice in that manner that you’ve never seen from anybody running for president or vice president before, and some people call it refreshing; other people, it’s scandalous. She has a flirtatious kind of thing, she wears heels and skirts as if to deliberately, you know, ‘Say something about it, I dare you.’ I would be inclined to get her to pretape something that we could use at the opening of our two-hour political ‘bash’ we’re doing Nov. 3. If I have access to her specifically, because I’m producing that along with some other people, I would like to get her on tape doing something, along with Biden, a split-screen—we did with Bush and Gore for the special eight years ago. I would like to use her for that.

Q. How much raw transcript of Palin do you use?

A. Keith Olbermann was making a big deal out of this, and I don’t quite understand the relevance. In one of the two Palin pieces they actually mined a lot of the actual Katie Couric interview, but the stuff [that] got the laughs was not from the Katie Couric interview, that was filler, it was packing material, bubble wrap. What got the laughs was the stuff that Tina and Seth [Meyers] or whoever came up with. I don’t know if the question is, does she write her own bits for us? The answer is no. I’ve heard from idiots who say, ‘Oh my God, you could just have a tape of Sarah Palin talking and it would be hysterical!’ And I go, Really? I don’t think so.

Q. What do you make of the idea that McCain and Palin are stirring up a lot of potentially dangerous forces in America by the suggestion that Obama is not truly American? Does Palin remind you at all of Joe McCarthy?

A. O.K., well—no, she doesn’t remind me of Joe McCarthy. Only in the sense that the discussions of it remind me in the sense that one of the other things about McCarthy was that again, there was a class thing. Alger Hiss was a Groton and Harvard graduate and an elegant gentleman, Whittaker Chambers was a public high-school product, kind of a tubby nerd, and McCarthy was considered, like, a lowbrow demagogue. I mean, as it happens, it turns out some of the things McCarthy said turned out to be true, and Alger Hiss turned out to be guilty. I don’t know; I always thought that the intellectual elites of Manhattan and L.A. have very soft lives, let’s say, and they love to relive the glory days of the ’50s when they felt persecuted and hunted and they showed remarkable courage at fending off this assault—and you still see in Hollywood, when Aaron Sorkin did that short-lived show Studio 60 or whatever that was? Me and my friends were taking bets on the over-under on how many shows it would take before there was one about the blacklist. He got to show six before he did the blacklist show.

Q. If William Ayers comes up in the next debate, could that come up on SNL?

A. Yeah, but the problem is one of the interesting things about the coverage. To me, the relevance was not what Ayers did 30, 40 years ago, it’s that he believes idiotic things. Like he believes that the purpose of education should be to create future community organizers as opposed to kids who can read, write and do math. The relevance is that Obama agreed enough with him to the extent that they gave each other foundation money and none to schools. They gave it to programs that employed imbeciles from HED schools who believe crazy things. That is relevant and worth talking about, and that’s what Ayers believes today, not 40 years ago. So no McCarthyism-like tactics on the part of the McCain campaign?

Q. Do you think Al Franken will be an effective, universally liked and admired senator from Minnesota?

A. I don’t know, I understand he’s ahead and obviously the better Obama does, the better Al will do. Probably Al’s getting along with people is going to be his biggest issue that he’ll face, in the Senate.

ggurley@observer.com

While it's always nice to see Mr. Murray, who played an audience member during the opening Presidential Debate skit, the 30-minute show was a microcosm for a lot of SNL's recent failings. Again, a major character in a keystone sketch had to be farmed out to a former player. Mr. Michaels fired Chris Parnell, and yet now he seems to be telling us that Mr. Parnell is the only person capable of playing Tom Brokaw? No one in the cast, not even a master impressionist like Bill Hader, could take on that role?

Right now, the only solid political impressions that Saturday Night Live has in its limited coiffeurs are the Clintons--Amy Poehler and Darrell Hammond kill as Hillary and Bill. But nearly every other one is done by a non-cast member (Tina Fey, Chris Parnell, Queen Latifah immediately and obviously spring to mind) or, worse, done badly by a current cast member.

It goes without saying that Fred Armisen's Barack Obama isn't good. But we're more disappointed by Darrell Hammond's John McCain. From a guy who so embodies Bill Clinton and Donald Trump whenever he plays them, Mr. Hammond's turn as the Arizona senator feels half-hearted. Outside of doing the weird lisp that John McCain has when he finishes words, Mr. Hammond never really nails anything else. It just feels like we're watching an old white dude.

Saturday Night Live has been a huge hit this year, and it will continue to be one of the most talked about shows of the year until the election. However, afterward, something might need to be done to restructure its cast. If the main part of your show is going to be political impressions, then you better hire people who can actually do them. Haven't we learned that outsourcing is a bad idea?

Judging from what's already made its way to YouTube  (haven't you seen this, this or this?), the moose-hunting hockey mom is in for a ribbing. So who will Saturday Night Live pick to play the small screen version of Sarah Barracuda?

We checked in this afternoon with Mr. Michaels' office in New York to get some answers, and according to Marc Liepis, a spokesperson for the show, the cast is still working on it.

They won't have to crash anything too fast either: the first new episode is slated for a week from Saturday. Here's hoping they have an easier time than they did with Barack Obama .