This NY article looks at how former U.S. President Gerald Ford dealt with the almost weekly lampooning at the hands of physical comedy master Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live.
While the events leading to Gerald Ford’s ascent to the White House tarred him as an accidental president, he will also be remembered as an accident-prone president.
Edie Baskin/NBCNo one did more to solidify Mr. Ford’s unfortunate, and perhaps unfair, standing as the nation’s First Klutz than Mr. Chase, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member who routinely portrayed the president committing all manner of trips, flails and lurches.
Mr. Ford’s cheerful reaction to the sendup included doing a cameo for “Saturday Night Live” from the Oval Office; sending his press secretary, Ron Nessen, on the show; and appearing with Mr. Chase at a political dinner. That type of reaction became a benchmark of what would come to be an essential presidential image-making skill: an ability to laugh at oneself.
People in the political and entertainment worlds recall Mr. Ford as a contemporary hero in this regard.
“He was just so incredibly decent and good-natured about the skit,” said Lorne Michaels, the longtime producer of “Saturday Night Live.” Mr. Ford sent a signal, Mr. Michaels said, that it was all right to be lighthearted about the presidency after the ordeal of the Watergate years.
“You couldn’t imagine Nixon signaling that this was O.K.,” Mr. Michaels said. In a sense, he added, Mr. Ford was telling the country that “we could all move on from this.”
“This” referred to Watergate, and Mr. Ford, who was acutely aware of the public mood, was adept at using humor as a balm. ...
The parody “just absolutely stuck in the public consciousness,” said Landon Parvin, who has written humorous speeches for Presidents Bush and Ronald Reagan.
It became so ingrained that Mr. Ford had no choice but to play along.
“He was very smart about trying to get out ahead of the joke,” said Mark Katz, a speechwriter who specialized in preparing President Bill Clinton for appearances at lighthearted Washington affairs, like the Gridiron and the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
“Now, every politician is lining up to make fun of themselves on Letterman and Jon Stewart’s couch,” Mr. Katz said.
Mr. Ford was hardly the first president to mock himself publicly. Even Richard M. Nixon was open to the ritual, once appearing on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” to solemnly utter the show’s catchphrase, “Sock it to me.” Nor was Mr. Chase the first comedian to impersonate a president on television. The impersonator Vaughn Meader lampooned John F. Kennedy on “The Ed Sullivan Show” multiple times.
But Mr. Chase was the first comedian to make fun of a president in what would become television’s signature forum for that, “Saturday Night Live.”
“Ford is so inept that the quickest laugh is the cheapest laugh, and the cheapest is the physical joke,” Mr. Chase told Time magazine in 1976. (A spokesman for Mr. Chase, who was skiing in Colorado on Thursday, said he would not be available for comment.)
Ford admitted he was stung at first by Mr. Chase’s parody, but acknowledged its effectiveness. “The portrayal of me as an oafish ex-jock made for good copy,” Mr. Ford wrote. “It was also funny.”
