Does Hillary Clinton owe her campaign's changing fortunes to Saturday Night Live?

Her campaign was on the verge of collapse two weeks ago when SNL aired the first of two skits depicting the media as heavily biased in favor of Barack Obama. SNL also gave Clinton a boost when guest and former SNL head writer Tina Fey endorsed her candidacy as part of a comedic riff in which she declared that "bitch is the new black."

Clinton milked the favorable SNL treatment for all it was worth by referring to the first skit during her last debate with Obama, and appearing as a surprise guest on SNL following a second skit that portrayed journalists fawning over Obama while trashing Clinton.

As the Boston Globe reports:

Saturday Night Live, the granddaddy of all political comedy shows, chose to build its Obama narrative around the idea that reporters were completely in his thrall. And its skits -- on both Feb. 23 and March 1 -- presented Obama as an amiable guy inflated to hero status by a worshipful media.

Clinton, by contrast, was presented as annoying but indefatigable -- a scrappy underdog whose complaints of unfairness got laughed off by the media. As if to drive home the point, Tina Fey used the Feb. 23 "Weekend Update" segment to deliver a thinly veiled exhortation to young women to quit Obama and get with the Hillary bandwagon.

"In less than a minute, the SNL skit crystallized Hillary's complaints [about unfair media treatment] and upgraded them from mere media inside baseball to the conventional wisdom," said Matthew Felling, former media analyst for CBS.com.

There's evidence that the tenor of campaign coverage actually changed following the SNL skit. A Pew study found that the media took a more critical look at Barack Obama the week after SNL spoofed journalists' love affair with the candidate.

Even Obama himself noted the change, telling reporters, "I am a little surprised that all the complaining about the refs has actually worked as well as it has for them. This whole spin of how the press has just been so tough on them and not tough on us -- I didn't expect that you guys would bite on that."

Obama also said he wants to meet Fey. "Clearly, Tina Fey and I are going to have to have a conversation," he said.

Whether or not Clinton's SNL bump was responsible for her victories in Ohio and Texas is debatable. But if she defies the odds and goes on to win the nomination, it may have marked the tipping point in her campaign.

Watch the first Clinton-Obama debate spoof
Watch the second debate spoof
Watch Hillary Clinton's cameo
Watch Tina Fey's Hillary endorsement

See also:
Live from New York...Vote Hillary! (Adam McKay, 23/6)
Saturday Night Live Abandons Comedy Format to Focus on Endorsements (Borowitz Report)

Related:
Saturday Night Live Clips
Late-Night Political Jokes
Funny Campaign Moments

(Photos by NBC)