Remember how Quentin Tarantino brought John Travolta‘s career back from the dead? That’s sort of how it’s starting feel in terms of SNL and Sarah Palin. To wit: Sarah Palin‘s, albeit rather dull appearance on SNL this weekend resulted in the show’s highest ratings in 14 years. And what of that appearance? Over at HuffPo Alec Baldwin is defending SNL‘s decision to have the Alaskan Governor on (which begs the question, did anyone actually think it was a bad idea?)

Saturday Night Live is a comedy show. It’s not Meet the Press…It attempts, with varying degrees of success, to make people laugh. That’s it. Whether they skewer and savage people in order to do so, they don’t care. When you come on a show like that, you are prepared in advance to get worked over. Palin knew that. Palin came on to be a good sport. And she was. She was polite, gracious. (More so than some of the famous actors who come through there, believe me.)

More to the point, if you haven’t already watched the Sarah Palin rap please go do so, it is hysterical. However! The New Yorker is also weighing in.

Read more

Kenneth Eng, the writer and former NYU student who set off a firestorm over an article entitled “Why I Hate Blacks” published in Asian Week, told Fox News’ John Gibson that he doesn’t regret anything:

GIBSON: You don’t have any regrets about saying something as overtly racist as you hate somebody because they’re black or because they’re white?

ENG: Evidently Sofia Coppola and Quentin Tarantino have nothing against that and neither does Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Tucker. So I have no regrets at all.

The transcript only gets more insane from there:

GIBSON: Why do you hate blacks?

ENG: Well, you know, just to be blunt, 90 percent of them usually walk up to me and call me, you know, like for instance, ching-chong and stuff like that. I mean, I don’t really give a damn, but you know, I mean, after a while it gets pretty damn annoying. And not to mention they get so much media attention. But you know, I mean aside from that, you probably want to know why I call myself the god of the universe as well.