[oldembed width="450" height="312" src="https://www.nbc.com/assets/video/5-0/swf/DirectWidget.swf?CXNID=1000004.10045NXC&widID=4727a250e66f9723&configXML=http://www.nbc.com/service/videowidget/params/dmlkZW9faWQ9MTM2MjU0OA==/%3FpageURL%3Dunknown%26referrerURL%3Dunknown" fid="11"]
SNL took a shot at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his response to the Occupy Wall Street protests, painting him as deciding to use the protests as a way to promote New York tourism and now being supportive of the protesters.
The best one I think was the attempt by the city to run the protesters out of there permanently because they wanted to clean park:
BLOOMBERG: Whatever you may have heard, I want to make demonstrators as welcome and as comfortable as possible. Yet, sometimes things do not go as planned. This week my office had arranged to clear the park of protesters so the area could be power washed. The protesters became upset and some went so far as to suggest that the power washing was simply a ruse to break up the demonstration. Nonsense. As all New Yorkers know, various parts of the city are routinely power washed. Power washing is a New York institution and without it, the Big Apple would lose its reputation as the world's cleanest and most thoroughly sanitized city – with streets, as the saying goes, you can eat off.
SNL also had Bloomberg suggesting that he's really not all that rich and the protesters go show up at other rich people's homes that they should be upset with besides himself such as George Soros, Jamie Dimon and Alex Rodriguez.
SNL is always pretty milquetoast when it comes to them weighing in on the political issues of the day and this was no exception, but the fact that the movement made its way to the opening segment of Saturday Night Live at least means that for now, those out there protesting are garnering some national attention and that hopefully their concerns are not going to be ignored by the media and easily dismissed as just some fringe movement that does not represent the frustrations of a good deal of the American public.
The fact that Bloomberg was being mocked as opposed to the protesters as we've seen from Fox, who sneers at them 24/7, is at least a step in the right direction with our political dialog and hopefully gets more people to pay attention to why they're out there to begin with and looking into it if they haven't been paying attention already.
