Hey everybody, we've got a great one today. You know, for a change. Jim Downey is with me.

Who's Jim Downey? In my mind, the greatest writer in the history of S&L. That's because I work with Jim for 14 seasons,

and Jim went on to write for many seasons more. And I don't know the

writers who came after my time at the show. I mean, John Mullaney did, some other others, too,

who are great writers. But Jim and I wrote a lot of the political stuff on the show during

our time together there, and so did

others, of course. But in this, we discuss how we approached our writing for a live

sketch comedy show, where you can comment on that week's events, using great sketch

artists like Dan Aykroyd and Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey to play the president.

Or if on a Thursday, a surgeon general, Joycelin Elder, said we should teach masturbation in our schools,

you can have Ellen Claighorn speak directly to camera to comment on that. That's what you can do with a live sketch show.

Jim had a motto for the political sketches that we wrote that went something like this.

Reward people for knowing stuff, but don't punish them for not knowing stuff.

Well, after I left, Jim wrote the Bush-Gore debate sketch,

the one where Will Ferrell as W.

summed up his campaign with strategery.

George W. Bush had never said strategyry.

That was Jim.

And you'll hear me make the case that

Daryl Hammond's gore, and Jim basically taught Daryl, his gore. And Daryl, by the way, one of the

great impressionists ever. But I make the case that that sketch elected Bush, who won by a little

over 500 votes in Florida.

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