Sarah Palin, wounded by Tina Fey’s spot-on impersonation on “Saturday Night Live,” needs to join in the laughs, campaign advertising veterans said Monday.
Joe Erwin, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Jon Fine, a media critic, and Mark Walsh, a venture capitalist who headed the Internet efforts of the John Kerry presidential campaign, agreed that Republican vice presidential candidate Palin could repair her image by facing up to the ribbing.
“All she has to do is show up,” said Mr. Fine, a columnist for BusinessWeek. “Tina Fey won’t have the guts to make fun of her to her face and neither do the writers. All she’s got to do is show up and she has won.”
Clips of Ms. Fey’s send-up of Gov. Palin’s folksy mannerisms have become a favorite of YouTube viewers, but Mr. Walsh said that an appearance on the NBC show, which once skewered President Gerald Ford would deflect the vapid image of Ms. Fey’s imitation.
“Judo is using your opponent’s strength against him,” Mr. Walsh said at the Time Warner Politics 2008 conference Monday.
Panelists also said that the message of Republican Sen. John McCain has become muddied, whereas the campaign of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has stayed true to the “change” tagline.
Mr. Walsh, citing long-debunked reports that Mr. Obama was a Muslim, said the Internet has become an effective platform for political rumor-mongering.
“Now for a couple of grand, you can buy a URL and get something started,” he said. “It has expanded the vitriol.”
Even when false reports are rebutted, they get recirculated online, Mr. Walsh said. “It’s like trying to get a genie back in the bottle.”