THE GOVERNOR? HE AIN’T LOVIN’ YA

Just before this interview, I watch Fred Armisen’s Saturday Night Live performance as New York ’s legally blind Governor David Paterson—the unexpected fill-in for disgraced politicaltitan-in-the-making former Governor Eliot Spitzer, who’d made enemies on Wall St., City Government, and Organized Crime in Gotham. The newly-promoted Paterson is six days away from selecting a senatorial replacement for Hillary Clinton, and is currently embroiled in a campaign with powerful allies of Caroline Kennedy, who are pressuring him to select her to fill the Senate vacancy.

Armisen’s impersonation of the Governor delivers what can be seen as either the exponential scale-up of a lunchroom bully turning the cafeteria into a Parthenon of shame, or a bold bit of in-your-face physical comedy. It serves as a garish  eminder of our unfamiliarity with the disabled, whom society de-normalizes—as evidenced …