OPINION
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
If you’re a politician in Washington, you know you’ve made the big time when you’re impersonated on “Saturday Night Live.”
But what if they mispronounce your name?
Congresswoman Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, was portrayed by SNL’s Heidi Gardner on Saturday (March 2) during a spoof on the Congressional hearing where former Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified.
Cohen was played by Ben Stiller, who admitted that “for too many years I was loyal to a man when I should not have been. Now I know how Khloe Kardashian feels.”
Longtime SNL cast member Kenan Thompson played committee chairman Elijah Cummings, who called on Speier to question Cohen.
But Thompson mispronounced Speier’s name, calling her “Spire,” as in church spire. It’s actually pronounced “Spear,” like the weapon.
One of the jokes in the skit was the questioning of Cohen by Republican Jim Jordan, played by returning SNL cast member Bill Hader. Essentially Hader made it seem as if Jordan had made a fool of himself.
When Cummings introduced Speier, she said: “Yeah, I would like to yield my time back to Jim Jordan so he can continue digging his own grave.”
Speier has been a frequent guest on cable news shows, but this is the first time that I can recall she was parodied on a comedy show. I think that makes you a national figure, whether they pronounce your name right or not.
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Housing? Who cares?
It’s funny how many in Palo Alto politics talk about building new housing, but then they conveniently forget about it.
In 2017, the city became aware that AT&T was going to sell some land at 3350 Birch St. in the Ventura neighborhood. At the time, there was talk that the land could be used for both housing and a small park.
But when the proposal to bid for the land returned to council last Monday, there was no talk about housing. The neighbors wanted a park, and neighborhood activists have a lot of sway on council members. Who cares about that housing crisis?
Council voted to bid on the land. If successful, the city will add the property to the nearby 1.5-acre Boulware Park.
• • •
An alien in underwear
Not sure the following item is newsworthy, but I’ll pass it along. A Palo Alto resident posted on Nextdoor that he saw a flying saucer hovering in front of City Hall at 9:40 p.m. Saturday.
“Then a bright spotlight appeared on the ground in front of City Hall and a partially naked Asian-looking man wearing only his underwear appeared from nowhere and started running in the middle of the street, screaming,” the poster said.
When others on Nextdoor demanded proof, the original poster uploaded video of a man in black underpants running down what appears to be Ramona Street, next to the police station.
People couldn’t hold back their opinions:
• One person put up a menacing ET-like picture and wrote “I’ve come for your real estate.”
• Another posted the Greg Brown mural of a flying saucer on that bank building on Lytton Avenue.
• “Was he an aide to Kim Jong Un, trying to catch up with the Dear Leader?”
• “Friends, this may be our last chance. We need to build a ceiling over the Peninsula and make the aliens pay for it.”
• “This is exactly the guy I witnessed in the back of my apartment complex,” wrote one correspondent, saying police and paramedics took him away.
• “Looking at the guy in the underwear. I’m sure we can all say we’ve been there. Am I right?
• “Aliens wear underwear?”
• And then there was this: “What you describe (and your video seems to confirm) looks like a Terminator arriving from the future to save humanity from being transformed into brainless zombies by social media platforms.”
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays. His email address is [email protected].
SNL really did a good job finding a Jackie lookalike, right down to the glasses.