Draft Betty White

Facebook, or rather the members of Facebook, have shown that they are not an entity with whom one should trifle.

A few weeks ago, they started the campaign to have actress Betty White, who’s now 88, host Saturday Night Live. I suspect this started as a substance-promoted idea in a college dorm late one night. Someone, probably watching a rerun of either Mary Tyler Moore or Golden Girls got the wild idea that Betty White should be the guest host on SNL.

The irony of an octogenarian hosting a show that is geared toward teenagers and stoned college students was simply too much to pass up. Being of the social network generation, someone immediately created a Facebook page, sent notices out to their friends and it “went viral” from there.

We taped the show. I couldn’t stay up late enough to watch SNL when I was a teenager or college student; in midlife, it’s even less likely that I’m going to stay up that late, especially after I learned years ago that I am usually not in touch enough with that genre of current events to recognize either the guest host or the music being highlighted.

It was about like I remembered SNL, though. There were lots of crude jokes and some skits that were beaten into the ground as they tried to fill the time slot. It wasn’t horrible enough to be noteworthy, but it also will be taped over in fairly short order.

This wasn’t the moon landing or the last episode of MASH.

The reason it was important, though, is that it shows the power of social networking and communication. Lots of us, me included, clicked that we “liked” this option – it didn’t cost anything, I had nothing in particular against it, and it had the potential to spotlight a talented senior actress to a generation that might not otherwise have been exposed to her humor.

Humor that is somewhat innocent and direct, doesn’t generally put down other people and while it may border on the bawdy at times is never overtly obscene. For the most part, I can sit in the room with both parents and children and watch Betty White without any of us being terribly embarrassed and at some point, we’ll all laugh at the same thing.

Is that a reason enough to publicly “like” something, though? The network and the actress herself were very open about the fact that Ms. White was invited only because of the pressure from Facebook. They made these social and economic decisions based upon that grassroots feedback.

I’ll have to think on that. In the meantime, someone has started a Facebook page to draft Carol Burnett to host Saturday Night Live.