SNL Satire: Ex-Presidents Urge Obama for Consumer Protections
Seven stars of the long-running NBC comedy Saturday Night Live got together for an unusual, and sometimes side-splitting, political effort in a special video made for the Web site Funny or Die...
The segment, directed by Ron Howard, brings back Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush, Dan Ackroyd as a fat Jimmy Carter, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford (which impression is the worst of the group), Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey as Ronald Reagan and Will Ferrell -- co-founder of Funny or Die -- as George W. Bush.
It was the first time that all the SNL faux presidents, a comic tradition initiated by Chase in the mid-'70s, had been in a sketch together. Howard told the Baltimore Sun, "I actually felt like now I understand a little bit when you get to manage or coach an all-star game."
The five-minute, 43-second clip ends with a pitch for consumers to get involved and urge their representatives to pass the act.
It was sponsored by mainstreetbrigade.org, a political group that favors creating a stand-alone agency for consumer protection, an idea that financial institutions have heavily lobbied to kill, and which is currently is on life support in Congress.