Rep. Michele Bachmann’s tea party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week became fodder for Saturday Night Live when SNL’s Kristen Wiig lampooned Bachmann in the opening scene. She played with the fact that Bachmann used a number of charts during her response, and that she appeared not to face the camera during CNN’s live broadcast. During her Tuesday night speech, Bachmann was looking directly at a camera run by the Tea Party Express, but to the majority of Americans, who saw her on CNN instead, she appeared to be looking away from her audience. While Bachmann has been the subject of an SNL Thursday sketch in 2009, the show-opening lampoon Saturday night certainly means that Bachmann has arrived on the national scene.

The fundraiser is taking place in Los Angeles and will cost between $2,400 and $4,800 to attend. It’ll be held at the House of Blues on Sunset Blvd. on Friday evening.

SNL's "Michele Bachmann"

They left Joe Wilson hanging: That’s the gag in a Saturday Night Live Thursday sketch last night. The scene is a Republican confab right before President Obama’s health care speech to Congress, and all the assembled GOPers are in agreement: When Obama says that health care won’t cover undocumented immigrants, everyone will shout “You lie!” at once. (“Remember school? If we all do it, we can’t get in trouble? That’s what I’m talking about.”) “Michele Bachmann” suggested a revision, which was rejected: “How about we yell, ‘You lie, you freedom-hating secret half-Muslim’?” But in the end the group decides to ditch the whole plan — unbeknownst to poor Wilson, who’s off in the loo.

Via Bluestem Prairie.

Pawlenty, Doyle signed pact to share money-saving tips. Photo: MN Northstar

This summer, it seems whenever you turn on the TV or tune in a radio newscast, another prominent pol has dropped out of contention for re-election. Republican governors especially have been dropping like flies: first Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, then Alaska’s Sarah Palin, and last week (officially and inevitably), South Carolina’s Mark Sanford. Now a Democrat will join that field: Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle.

With Doyle’s departure — his decision to not run for a third term is expected to become official today – Wisconsin likely won’t see anything quite like the crowd of possible gubernatorial candidates (nearly 40-strong) that has overrun Minnesota since Pawlenty’s announcement.

But a couple Republicans have already seized on Doyle’s perceived political weakness as an open invitation to re-take the governor’s mansion.

The Democratic field will likely include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who was also in the news over the weekend for stopping an assault at the Wisconsin State Fair parking lot, leaving him hospitalized with injuries to his head and a broken hand.

“The mayor’s heroic actions clearly saved a woman and others from harm,” Doyle said.

Still unclear is whether Doyle will also resign from office, like Palin, or complete his term, like fellow two-termers Pawlenty and Sanford.

Sanford’s statement last week that his political career will end when he leaves the South Carolina governor’s mansion was anticlimactic after a summer of scandal that made the move almost inevitable. The straw that apparently broke Sanford: news that he’d used a state plane for personal travel.

But until Sanford made his announcement, there still seemed a chance that he might follow the example of a stalwart backer in his inner circle: South Carolina comptroller and Duluth native Richard Eckstrom.

Eckstrom proved that billing the state government for personal travel and being the butt of a “Saturday Night Live” satire sketch need not impede an office-holder from getting re-elected. South Carolina voters apparently accepted his apology for driving a state minivan and buying gas with a state credit card for a 2004 family trip to his home state of Minnesota.

The clip was 18 years old yet couldn’t have been more timely — or uncanny. It showed Franken portraying Simon during a Senate Judicary Committee hearing on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, just as the current Franken was playing himself, as a real senator, during hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier all that was available online was the transcript of the sketch. Then on July 17 the Economist’s Democracy in America blog noted that “NBC has finally re-released the video.”

The clip was posted at Hulu.com, a site that NBC co-owns. But by July 19, the video had been removed. Did Franken use the power of his office to get the network to make unavailable his past violation of the senatorial solemnity?

“No,” responded Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh to a Minnesota Independent inquiry.

NBC won’t comment on who decided to post the Franken-as-Simon video — or to take it down. Sharon Pannozzo, the network’s East Coast entertainment publicity director, said by email that the length of time NBC shows remain posted at Hulu varies, and brief appearances — some as short as 24 hours — are “very common.”

That leaves fans of Franken’s screen humor to scan the likes of YouTube, where SNL clips are quickly removed but random gems like a recently uploaded scene from the 1976 movie “Tunnel Vision” sometimes reappear.

Photo: hulu.com

NBC just dug a timely video out of its vaults: Al Franken playing a U.S. senator on the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, questioning a U.S. Supreme Court nominee. Now viewers can compare and contrast his 1991 and 2009 performances.

Here’s Franken in 1991 on SNL, in a spoof on the Clarence Thomas hearings (Franken starts at the 5:00 mark):

UPDATE: The video, posted by NBC at its Hulu site, is now down. The Minnesota Independent has contacted Hulu to find out why. Until we hear back or they put it back up, you can read the transcript of the sketch here (though it’s much better on video). 

And here’s Franken this week, playing himself, in the real Sonia Sotomayor hearings (via The UpTake):

Refreshingly, the “Parks and Recreation” Web site appears to have absolutely no information about the TV show, except for a page devoted to Poehler’s character, City of Pawnee Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Leslie Knope. So here’s a trailer for “Parks and Recreation,” which is coming soon to a city near you via network TV, whether your local government needs parody or already provides its own.

TV trivia: The fictional city of Pawnee, Ind., has an official seal that bears a slight resemblance to Minnesota’s state seal.

We can’t speak for the cast or writers, but as for founding SNL producer Lorne Michaels? He’s a McCain man. 

More: Hollywood Republicans are a fairly rare breed; here’s a list of some of them. 

SNL: 3 a.m. ad spoof, 3/8/08