Clinton does ‘Saturday Night Live’ but misses out on endorsement

Hillary Rodham Clinton took a break from the campaign trail to thank comedy skit show “Saturday Night Live” for giving her candidacy a boost – although she failed to get an official endorsement from the show.

Clinton’s campaign has gotten a good deal of mileage out of an “SNL” sketch from a week ago in which reporters fawned over her rival, Barack Obama. Clinton brought up the sketch during last Tuesday’s debate between the two candidates, and the campaign has encouraged supporters and voters to watch it on NBC’s Website.

This weekend’s episode opened with a similar sketch recreating Tuesday’s debate. It portrayed NBC anchors Brian Williams and Tim Russert asking Clinton, played by Amy Poehler, tough questions while serving softballs to Obama, the current frontrunner.

Then the real Clinton appeared onscreen with an “editorial response.”

The sketch, she said, “wasn’t an endorsement of one candidate over another. I can say this confidently because when I asked if I could take it as an endorsement, I was told, ‘Absolutely not.’ But I still enjoyed that sketch a great deal because I simply adore Amy’s impression of me.”

When Poehler asked her how the campaign was going, Clinton responded: “The campaign is going very well. Very, very well. Why, what have you heard?”

It was the third consecutive “SNL” episode featuring a presidential contender. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of last week’s show. On a November episode of “SNL,” the last before the Writers Guild of America strike, Obama played himself as a guest at a party thrown by Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Later in Saturday’s show, Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, made an appearance to poke fun at his failed presidential bid during the “Weekend Update” segment.

The music on this weekend’s episode was performed by Wilco, a Chicago-based band that performed at a fundraiser for Obama in December.