Saturday Night News with Rev. Jesse Jackson

Instead of reading joke news stories, Rev. Jesse Jackson injects wit and commentary into items about the Battleship Iowa and Desmond Tutu winning the Nobel Peace Prize, before getting into the meat of tonight’s segments, where he dissects Reagan’s answers in the debate. This was a wise move; not only is Rev. Jackson better served by getting his viewpoint across, but his debate analysis has some of his funniest moments all night. Because of the Equal Time Rule (which is sorely missed in 2017), Young Republicans representative Bob James (Martin Short) tries to give a rebuttal criticizing Rev. Jackson for “hijacking the show”, but Jackson quickly intimidates him to the point of tears. Short performs this well, but I thought Rev. Jackson was the funnier of the two here. Jim Belushi returns as Rappin’ Jimmy B, whose poor attempt at rap prompts Rev. Jackson to come up with his own rhymes calling him out. The initial Belushi rap is as cringeworthy as one would expect, but having Rev. Jackson does not enjoy it gave this an extra level of humor compared to the earlier Rappin’ Jimmy B pieces. Nate Herman co-wrote this piece with Eliot Wald at Belushi’s behest; according to Herman, Rev. Jackson nixed a line about Belushi making words “sound like they’re picking cotton”.

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