Karl Rove's gratuitous and erroneous shot at Calvin Coolidge.

I don't know why this irks me so much. Something about an attack on an entirely undefended person. Something about propagating a factoid. Somehow it's my job to keep history straight and defend Calvin Coolidge.

It was "Fox News Sunday" this morning, and "GOP strategist" Karl Rove was asked whether Donald Trump's appearance on "Saturday Night Live" helped or hurt him. Rove says:

It helped. Everybody got their moment last night. He got to be marked by the Saturday Night Live crowd, and he got a chance to say he's a good sport and could take it in stride. I think we ought to go back and blame this, however, all on Calvin Coolidge, who was after all, the first president to appear on the White House lawn in an Indian headdress. And since then presidents have felt compelled to go out and occasionally mock themselves, and now presidential candidates have gotten in the habit of mocking themselves. It was, however, I have to say, not very funny.

There's laughter, and the moderator Chris Wallace says "Are you talking about Calvin Coolidge?" and Rove says, "No, I'm talking about last night."

Now, maybe some home viewers said: "The first president to appear on the White House lawn in an Indian headdress — were there others?" But I said: "That wasn't on the White House lawn! That was in South Dakota!"

Calvin Coolidge famously posed in a headdress:



This happened on June 23, 1927:

Coolidge, who was celebrated for signing the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, spent the summer of 1927 in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, working out of an office in Rapid City High School. When Sioux Chieftain Chauncey Yellow Robe, a descendant of Sitting Bull, learned the President would be there, he suggested he be adopted into the tribe. The Sioux County Pioneer, a weekly publication that came out every Thursday, reported that Yellow Robe... said: “The Indians are like anybody else, they are also anxious to see him come. Our population of more than 20,000 Sioux Indians, the first people of the Hills, will also open their hearts with most sincere and hearty welcome of President Coolidge to the land of the Dakotas and if the occasion should permit, President Coolidge will be adopted into the Sioux tribe. We hope he will find in these beautiful Pahasapas (Black Hills) rest, peace, quiet and friendship among us.”

Why, exactly, is it supposed to be funny for him to wear that headdress? In any case, this did not take place at the White House and it has nothing to do with present-day appearances in pop culture settings like "Saturday Night Live."

"Donald Trump gives SNL its biggest ratings in years."

"According to NBC, SNL had a whopping 6.6 household rating on Saturday night..."

.. easily beating the season’s previous high: the 41st season premiere last month, hosted by Miley Cyrus and with a guest appearance by none other than … Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump’s overnight rating was 47 percent higher than the Miley/Hillary episode.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry... WaPo is soooo so so so sorry Donald Trump was on "Saturday Night Live."

I went over to The Washington Post to read "Trump’s sorry night on ‘SNL’: An overhyped bummer for us all" and I couldn't help noticing the sidebar:



Nothing like showing us how you really feel. I get it. You hate Trump and you're irked that he got the platform of "Saturday Night Live" to pose on — just like Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago and all the many other politicians who've had a shot at hosting over the years. What was so bad about the episode?

Hank Stuever, the WaPo TV critic calls the episode "an anemic and halfhearted dud" and a "boring and misspent episode," but based on what? He says that the cast members seemed to lack the "desire to participate" or "play with him." There was one sketch that was about the cast doing a sketch while Trump was tweeting about them and feeling bad about that, and maybe that signaled how they really felt about him, but that doesn't make the show halfhearted and dull. That showed them going meta with whatever distance they felt they needed, which isn't necessarily dull.

Stuever seems to demand that the show do sharper political mockery, but the failure to insult and abuse a guest host doesn't mean there won't be stronger satire on other occasions or that the comedy we did get wasn't good. So what was such a "sorry" "bummer"? Well, Stuever didn't like the "You're a racist" yell from Larry David in the cold open. But that was great! And:

From there it was one dud after another — some of it featuring Trump, much of it not, the minutes slowing to a crawl. A sketch set in 2018, in a wildly successful Trump White House, fell apart quickly. “Weekend Update” did a fair job of playing a little offense.... The “Update” segment also made good use of Bobby Moynihan’s “Drunk Uncle” character — turns out he’s the ideal demographic for the Trump message...

I'm sorry, Stuever, you have not marshaled the evidence that this was a sorry, boring, dud bummer. You're just pissed that Trump was showcased.

ADDED: Here's my earlier post on what I thought of the show.

Donald Trump's "Saturday Night Live" stint.

1. This was the best part:



That's very funny even without knowing the original video that it spoofs, but you can watch that here. Spoofing that isn't original. It's already much spoofed.

2. For the commenter who asked at 11:05 PM last night, "Why aren't you live blogging SNL?" You have no idea how early I go to bed! I was up at 5, however, and I watched the DVR of the show over breakfast.

3. We loved seeing Ed Grimley! Too bad they had to put "Ed Grimley" in big letters on screen... presumably to help the kids out there whom they must have imagined all saying "Who's that guy?" Here at Meadhouse, Ed Grimley is imitated approximately every other day.

4. Trump did a nice job. He wasn't just a good sport about getting flanked by 2 Trump impersonators in the opening monologue. He seemed to enjoy it. And he accepted Larry David yelling "You're a racist!" at him. Laughing at the idea of being considered a racist. That's edgy. [ADDED: "A Hispanic advocacy group had offered anyone in the SNL audience a $5,000 reward if they called Trump a 'racist' during his opening monologue."]

5. I skipped over the musical act, but Sia stole my 1965 hairstyle.

6. Lots more Larry David in the cold open. David owns the Bernie Sanders impersonation. I wonder if that was the first time the line "It's Saturday Night!" was skipped. Cranky old Larry/Bernie says "Live from New York, eh, you get it."

7. Late in the show there's a fake ad for Donald Trump done by aging porn actresses. The punch line is Donald Trump walking on and saying "I'm Donald Trump and I in no way, shape, or form approve of this message," but the most interesting thing is the shot at Bill Clinton that comes at about 3:00. One of the messed-up ladies dreams of getting to visit the White House: "I haven't been there since the 90s," and the other says, "Oh, yeah, I hit my head on the desk." For a show that's seemed so in-the-tank for Hillary, that's some serious balance.

The "SNL" take on the Democrats' debate is very funny... with Larry David in the obvious role.

Yes, I watched "Saturday Night Live" with Hillary.

I thought the cold open with the Trump impersonator was very entertaining. I even liked Miley Cyrus singing "My Way" as the monologue. But Hillary did fine. Of course, the show loves her and exalted her as much as they could get away with... or more... that shoe stuff in the end was embarrassing. But Hillary herself looked good — maybe she should dress like a bartender all the time — and she showed some comic spark.

ADDED: By the way, when did it become a thing for women to wear flesh-colored shoes? Is it related to that awful trend of ice skaters wearing flesh-colored tights that come down over the skates? "Exhibit A: Sarah Hughes, 2002 Olympic Gold Medalist":



Notice that in the first GOP debate, Carly Fiorina was wearing those seemingly ubiquitous flesh-tone shoes:



It's like they're saying: Don't consider me to be wearing shoes at all. Just think of my feet as an inconspicuous continuation of my legs.

In the second debate, however, she upgraded to shoes that were shoes!