TEVI TROY: Celebrating 50 years of presidential mockery

Chevy Chase's portrayal of President Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live 50 years ago broke new ground in presidential mockery after decades of network censorship.

Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including "The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry." 

The networks were similarly reluctant to mock Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson. In 1964, NBC imported the British parody show That Was the Week That Was, which was specifically developed in England to "prick the pomposity of public figures." Although the show did get in an occasional poke at Johnson, NBC censors constantly battled the show’s producers over LBJ jokes. NBC also took the step of suspending all political humor on the show around the 1964 presidential election.

Another show that tried to make fun of the president was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The show, which premiered on CBS in 1967, even got pushback from Johnson himself. One skit that mocked Johnson prompted Johnson to tell CBS Chairman William Paley in a late-night call, "get those b------- off my back." Paley asked the show to go easier on the president.