And the AP has the background story:

Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday. … The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state. Audette, posing as Sarkozy, speaks in an exaggerated French accent and drops ample hints that the conversation is a joke. But Palin seemingly does not pick up on them.

As much as I love the concept, something about the execution rubs me the wrong way.  Maybe it’s because as much as I think Sarah Palin is a joke, I’m not sure how I feel about the rest of the world getting in on it.  Sarah Palin is obviously not a good look for America.  But as an American, I feel a kind of knee-jerk defensiveness of– not so much her, but maybe us, our politics.  By and large, America isn’t nearly as unserious about the world as Palin’s presence on a major national ticket would suggest.  Well, half of us anyway.

My other problem with the execution of the call is that it’s easy to rehash all the old jokes– lipstick on a pig, hunting, seeing Russia from Alaska– and just see if Palin gets it (and it’s not clear that she ever does).  But they could have really gotten some insightful cracks in there.  Imagine fake Sarkozy asking Palin what she thinks about some really important but slightly obscure recent development in, say, the Iraq War.  Or French-American relations.  It’s one thing for her to stumble through those kinds of questions from the “gotcha” liberal media elite, but how would she react to actually having to demonstrate basic foreign policy knowledge to a head of state?  It was definitely a missed opportunity.

And here’s a pretty entertaining behind-the-scenes chat with John and Cindy McCain on their history with SNL. Check out when Cindy says something like, “It’s what I do best; I just stand there and look good.” Do I sense a little tension?

If for some reason you are standing up while surfing the Internet, you should go ahead and sit down right now.  Because this is probably the coolest thing you’ll ever see.

Cashing in on election fever, EA today announced that, as part of an upcoming update for Mercenaries 2, both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama will be made available as playable characters. Palin in her trademark red jacket and hair, Obama in his trademark…suit. Sounds a little nutty, but seeing Obama punch a swarthy Venezuelan in the face is a lot funnier than you can probably imagine.

“When you think of John McCain, think of me, George W. Bush. Think of this face. When you’re in the voting booth, before you vote…….. picture… this… face.” Too funny!

The second skit was a lot funnier. First of all, Amy Poehler has some serious skills on the mic. I would buy her album. Second, the Todd Palin background dancer was great. And third, Barack Obama has nothing on Palin’s dance moves. Watch how into it she gets when they shoot the moose. Hilarious!

UPDATE: Sarah Palin is scheduled to appear on SNL this weekend, which seems to me like a realization by the McCain campaign that the Tina Fey character is killing Palin’s image. And I’m sure Palin has some personal thoughts of her own on the whole thing. The question is: Will she say it to Tina Fey’s face?

Some surprisingly risque material from a potential first lady… Oh, wait, what? Betty who? Oh. Then let’s try this again.

There, that’s the real Cindy McCain. As you can see, she’s much better suited to play the traditional first lady attack dog role. And by “better suited,” I mean wildly out of place. And by “traditional,” I mean, “What in the world is John McCain thinking having his wife make political attacks???” Even Bush knows better than that.

The “Really?!/Oh, my God, are you serious?!” bit at the 2:12 mark is pretty funny, too. Speaking of which, it can’t be overstated how much NBC sucks for not letting people chop up their clips and post them on YouTube. Nobody wants to skip through these ten minute videos to get to the good stuff. Except the readers of TWP, of course, which is why I posted this ten minute clip for you to skip through.

The debate skit was good, too, but it ran long. Fred Armisen’s Obama struck the first funny note ever for me when he confessed to being best friends with Bill Ayers, then said, “Now, I’m telling you this because I’m so far ahead in the polls right now, it’s not gonna matter.” Though this is getting dangerously close to my Scary Obama idea. Any more of this, and I’ll need to see my name in the credits.

I won my special needs son on eBay

now heres a shout out to 250 thousand terrorists the Castro brothers Kim Jung Ill Iran um oil companies and of course Lieberman bless their hearts they inspire John McCain and me destroy America

I have a message for you I am unqualified and can not accept that with dignity

my campaign is a torturous nightmare

Uh, there’s a few others that make use of the words “drilling” and “package” but they’re not really appropriate to post here.  If you come up with any good ones, post them in the comments section.

My first thought was, “Why is Katie Couric pregnant?” Oh, yeah, because Amy Poehler is in real life. Sarah Palin is not an unintelligent woman, but– the look, the accent, the life story, the Oh-God-I-totally-forgot-there-was-a-quiz-today-why-didn’t-I-study-last-night interviewing style– she just presents so many comedic avenues. The sad part is that Tina Fey’s answer on the bailout is almost word-for-word exactly what Palin said.

In other news, a lot of people do Bill Clinton (at least, that’s what she said), but Darrell Hammond is Bill Clinton. I’ve been meaning to post about Clinton’s lukecold support of Barack Obama. Does anyone seriously think he’d be going out of his way repeatedly to praise John McCain if Hillary was the nominee? But Hammond captures it perfectly: “I… support… Barack Obama… is something I’ve heard from people all over this country.”

And SNL did do a skit on the debate, but it was boring and ran long, so I won’t waste your time. Fred Armisen still hasn’t figured out how to make Barack Obama funny. Again, my idea: Keenan Thompson (or better yet, Tracy Morgan) as the Barack Obama presidency that “skeptical” whites are afraid of. Have President Obama in the White House passing legislation that use of racial slurs is now a felony. Have President Obama bringing Secretary of State Diddy to negotiations with Ahmadinejad– and get Diddy to play himself (how about a Making the Supreme Court skit?). Have President Obama end every skit with an “As-Salaam Alaykum” and a fist bump. The possibilities are literally endless. Step it up, SNL. Armisen just umming and uhhing his way through Tony Rezko jokes is not getting the job done.

This strikes me as worse than the The View debacle two weeks ago. McCain could pass that one off as a biased panel who unfairly ambushed him. But Letterman, in between shots, keeps calling McCain an “honest to God hero.” He’s speaking more as a disappointed friend than someone with a political ax to grind. I’m guessing this will do some damage with low-information voters– the ones who aren’t big on issues, but instead vote for the candidate they like and trust the most.

My question is, when are they gonna figure out how to make a Barack Obama skit funny? Fred Armisen didn’t get the job done last season, and after an entire summer to work on it, they haven’t even tried yet this year. Step it up, SNL.

UPDATE: As soon as I posted this, the words “Be careful what you wish for” came to mind.