As always, finding the potential for comedy in the midst of an ongoing tragedy is as difficult as it is dangerous. Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers and the Weekend Update team proved themselves equal to the task last night with an exclusive interview with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (Armisen).
Portraying the 82-year-old president as an affably deluded near-dictator who has no idea how much he is disliked by his people, Armisen maintains that the people of Egypt love their president, and that the only reason they're unhappy is because the Internet is down thanks to Time Warner's poor service.
More pointedly, the sketch addresses the stranglehold that long-term governments often have on maintaining the status quo:
If I resign, what am I going to do? I've been an Egyptian president for 30 years. Is there another Egypt that needs a president that I don't know about?
The president then goes on to explain the steps he's prepared to take to solve the crisis, which include firing his cabinet, then rehiring it, and that's it.
One can only imagine that when this President Mubarak returns to Egypt to find that his wife, daughter and son Gamal, who had been considered a potential successor to the presidency, have all fled the country, he'll simply assume they popped out for an extended shopping spree in London.
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