President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL
Saturday Night LiveCited 4× on HN, 2019–2025
comedy · general · 2019–2025 on HN
A 1986 SNL sketch in which Phil Hartman's Reagan seems clueless in public but is a scheming mastermind in private.
Used mainly as a reference for how contemporaries viewed Reagan's presidency, and occasionally as a joke.
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4 comments from Hacker News
Because he's both an evil genius and a senile old man at the same time, just like Reagan. President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL: ▶ this video
This SNL skit provides one view: ▶ this video Even my mother, a product of an FDR world, who threw shoes at Reagan on TV could not stop laughing about how over the top it was. I credit Nancy. She saw the ideologues he put in during the first term where driving for a cliff and brought Baker, Deaver and Schultz in to right the ship. It helped to have someone like Tip O’Neil in the House who thought impeaching over Iran Contra would be bad for the country. Reagan, like W Bush wasn’t incompetent, he was just incurious and easily led the farther he went up. Look at Reagan’s 1964 speeches and W’s Governor debates and it’s like they both fell of a skateboard and cracked their heads open once they ran for President.
Agreed with all of this. Also, skits like this one by SNL made in 1986 (copied from elsewhere) wouldn't have been made unless people were already noticing a disconnect... even if they didn't know the exact cause: ▶ this video
▶ this video 'President Reagan (Phil Hartman) acts hopeless and clueless in public, but in private he's an evil mastermind who knows every detail about everything happening in his administration. [Season 12, 1986]'