Jimmy Carter's Genius and Common Touch are the Focus of One of My Favorite Saturday Night Live Sketches
Chevy Chase famously played Gerald Ford as a genial doofus whose defining characteristics were stupidity and clumsiness. Chase portrayed Ford as a man who somehow became the world’s most powerful man despite not knowing anything.
Dan Aykroyd’s take on Jimmy Carter was antithetical. If Chase played Ford as a dumb dumb who didn’t know anything, Aykroyd played Jimmy Carter as a charming, smiling genius who knew EVERYTHING.
It was an almost perversely flattering depiction of a president, but it was rooted in reality. You have to be pretty fucking smart to make the leap from Georgia peanut farmer to Leader of the Free World.
You have to be REALLY FUCKING SMART. How smart? Nuclear scientist smart. Nobel Prize-winning smart.
Carter was that smart and that sharp. During World War II, he worked on nuclear submarines under Admiral Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Submarine and, full disclosure, the great uncle of a girl I once dated.
The late, beloved president’s formidable intellect took center stage in one of my all-time favorite Saturday Night Live sketches.
It took the form of a Presidential call-in show hosted by Bill Murray’s Walter Cronkite that allowed everyday Americans to kibbitz with the Commander-in-chief.
The first caller is a postal worker from Kansas who wants to know what can be done about a malfunctioning automated letter-sorting system where letters keep getting clogged in the grid.
It’s a hilariously dry query. It’s also a spectacularly inappropriate question to ask a man with the world's hardest, most stressful, and important job.
There’s no reason to believe that Carter would know anything about the ins and outs of the postal system, yet the question is nevertheless asked with matter-of-fact casualness. The sketch acts as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, a question your boss probably wouldn’t be able to answer.
Carter returns the caller’s casualness and tells her exactly what she needs to do to fix the system.
Dan Aykroyd was barely old enough to drink legally when he played the grey-haired president of the United States, yet he had mastered playing colorful characters of all ages.
Aykroyd’s performance in the sketch is a glorious expression of autistic joy. Part of what I love about sketches like this, and a musical tribute to early television also starring and written by Aykroyd, is the palpable joy the actor/writer/neurodivergent icon gets from indulging his special interests and objects of hyper-fixation.
I don’t know anything about technology, science, or how machines operate, yet I experienced vicarious pleasure watching the young Dan Aykroyd rattle off highly technical jargon at a machine-gun pace in a way that clearly fills him with joy.
Cronkite points out that none of the calls are screened. That helps explain why the Commander-in-chief’s next caller is a space cadet who calls himself Captain Midnight, who lusts after the president’s wife and attempts to call Cronkite a stupid motherfucker before Carter cuts him off.
The third call is from a 17-year-old who took some bad acid. The ceiling is dripping, and he’s convinced he can’t wear clothes.
Cronkite understandably wants to cut the stoner off, but Carter is compassionate and empathetic.
“This guy is in trouble. I better talk him down” Carter tells Cronkite.
Carter ascertains that the teen took some orange sunshine and is having a heavy trip.
“Everything’s going to be fine. You’re really high right now and probably will be for the next five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B complex; if you have a beer, go ahead and drink it. Just remember you’re a living organism on this planet and you’re safe, you’ve just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music, okay? Do you have any Allman Brothers? You know I’m against drug use myself, but I’m not going to lay that on you now.” tells the overwhelmed young man.
Aykroyd’s Carter ends by saying that he’ll call the young man on Monday to make sure he came down from his acid trip safely.
It’s a brilliant sketch that captures the late president's brilliance and humanity.
Carter was a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear scientist and a Southern peanut farmer of humble origins. “Ask President Carter” captures this duality.
Saturday Night Live generally makes fun of presidents, but the sketch has an unmistakable element of reverence.
The next four years are going to be a very heavy trip so I admonish everyone to have a beer, take some Vitamin B complex and remember that you’re a living organism on this planet and you’re safe, even if doesn’t necessarily feel that way.
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