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In a November 1976 episode of \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d Gilda Radner, in her recurring impression of Barbara Walters \u2014 a.k.a. Baba Wawa \u2014 interviews Henry Kissinger, played by John Belushi. After inquiring about his \u201csilly, silly\u201d accent, which she says \u201creally, really irritates\u201d her, Radner asks Belushi to repeat after her: \u201cI am a really, really fat, roly poly diplomat.\u201d He does.<\/p>\n
The sketch includes a joke about Kissinger\u2019s German-Jewish background. In a 1987 episode of \u201cS.N.L.,\u201d his religion comes up again in a sketch called \u201cThe Assimilated Jew\u2019s Hanukkah.\u201d In it, Al Franken imitates Kissinger, who is selling an album of Jewish Christmas songs. \u201cDozens of your favorite Christmas songs with lyrics a responsible Jew can feel comfortable singing,\u201d he says \u2014 songs like \u201cSilent Eight Nights\u201d and \u201cWhite Yom Tov.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Kissinger\u2019s death on Wednesday<\/a> at 100 years old, Franken posted a memory on<\/a> social media that referred to an American bombing campaign in North Vietnam in December 1972: \u201cKissinger called SNL once late on a Friday night looking for tix for his son. The Stones were playing that week. I told him that if it hadn\u2019t been for the Xmas bombing, he\u2019d have the tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is of little surprise that Kissinger, a polarizing figure who advised 12 American presidents and was the most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, has been skewered and caricatured by comics for decades. His pronounced accent and manner of speaking were primed for satire, as was how he would regularly make statements that he seemed to think were quite profound but many found trite or ingratiating. (\u201cPower is the ultimate aphrodisiac,\u201d for instance.) He also appeared to be an irresistible target to those on the left in particular, who perceived him as an attention-seeking egotist and seemed to relish taking him down a peg by casting him as silly, albeit sinister.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the 1980s, the British comedy troupe Monty Python released a song<\/a> titled \u201cHenry Kissinger.\u201d Among its lyrics: \u201cYou\u2019re the doctor of my dreams\/with your crinkly hair\/and your glassy stare\/and your Machiavellian schemes\/I know they say that you are very vain\/and short and fat and pushy\/but at least you\u2019re not insane.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1983, on \u201cSCTV,\u201d Eugene Levy took<\/a> a drunken, stumblebum approach to Kissinger in a sketch that had him appear as a guest on a fictional late-night show hosted by Sammy Maudlin (Joe Flaherty). \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about Watergate,\u201d he says belligerently. \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about Richard Nixon. He was a great president. He will go down as one of the great presidents in history. What do you know about Richard Nixon?\u201d he yells, slamming his fist on the desk.<\/p>\n At the start of the 2015 documentary<\/a> \u201cCall Me Lucky\u201d about his life, the comedian and political satirist Barry Crimmins<\/a> is seen giving a speech at an antiwar rally in Boston Common in 1990. \u201cThey tell us it\u2019s not another Vietnam, and then they wheel out Henry Kissinger to tell us about it!\u201d he yells before asking, \u201cWhat, was Goebbels unavailable that day?\u201d in reference to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Switching into a Kissinger voice, Crimmins says, \u201cWe must be very careful or war will be averted.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2015, Crimmins told The New Yorker<\/a> that he was once in a green room with Kissinger, where he avoided being introduced. \u201cI have a policy about not shaking hands with war criminals,\u201d Crimmins said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Aside from being a guest in 2014<\/a>, Kissinger himself made appearances in sketches (which drew pointed criticism<\/a>) on \u201cThe Colbert Report,\u201d Stephen Colbert\u2019s satirical news program on Comedy Central in which he portrayed a conservative blowhard caricature for nine years. In 2013, Colbert danced<\/a> to Daft Punk\u2019s \u201cGet Lucky\u201d through various scenes that featured several stars and notable names, including Bryan Cranston, Jeff Bridges, the Rockettes and Kissinger, who picks up the phone and calls security.<\/p>\n Years earlier, in 2006, Kissinger weighed in<\/a> on a rock music contest in which Colbert and Peter Frampton competed against the Decemberists. In the episode, Kissinger said, \u201cIt\u2019s time to rock,\u201d and \u201cI think the American people won.\u201d In 2013, in an event at the New York Comedy Festival<\/a>, Colbert said that Kissinger was also supposed to say, \u201cWhere are my pancakes? I was promised pancakes,\u201d but he didn\u2019t appreciate the line. \u201cWe have the tape of him reading the copy,\u201d Colbert said, \u201cand then he goes, \u2018That is too much,\u2019\u201d quoting him with his accent.<\/p>\n Jason Zinoman contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n