"Wow...He Looks JUST Like....."

Joe Piscopo ruined Frank Sinatra for me.

That’s how spot on his impression of the guy was back in the Eddie Murphy/Joe Piscopo period of SNL.

And therein lies the hidden down side to great satire.

Once an icon is brilliantly lampooned, it’s difficult to ever see them again without being distracted by the harpoon.

For example, no matter what credibility she tries to build in the next few years, will you ever be able to see Sarah Palin standing behind a podium without anticipating that, at any moment, she’s going to start moving back and forth across the stage doing, as Tina Fey so remarkably parodied, “some fancy pageant walking”?

Say what you want about the “power of persuasion” that political pundits and/or commentators possess.

But I’m a thinkin that they don’t hold a candle to the gang at Saturday Night Live when it comes to influencing the minds and/or hearts of Joe and Jane Everyman/woman.

Write Fey and company off as insignificant examples of arrested development if it suits ya…but, trust me, you’re underestimating them if you do.

Perception is, after all, reality.

And while her involvement in the campaign didn’t last long enough for me to form an honest opinion of Palin and her dogma, my perception of her, thanks to (or blamed on, depending…) the impersonations done of her was that she was a ditz disguised as a rising political star.

The moral of the story, kids, is don’t discount the impact of the impressionist.

Just think for a second about the celebrities/politicians, et al who have been, at best, dented by the on target shots taken at them by those who have impersonated them.

Bill.
Hillary.
Dubya.
Cheney.
Paris.
Britney.
Lindsay.
Olsen twin.
The other Olsen twin (not necessarily in that order).
Michael Jackson.
McCain.
Palin.

And the list, like the beat, goes on.

Nixon was a prime target in the day.
As was LBJ.

In fact, come to think of it, the only “star”, show biz, political or otherwise, who managed to minimize the damage done to his cred and rep by the impersonators was, I believe, the one who was probably impersonated more than any single other celebrity in the history of mankind.

The King.

Uh-huh-huh.

What the hell, you say?
Elvis was the ultimate parody?

Correctamundo.

But E wasn’t discredited by the thousands who impersonated him “for real” through the years and then, in the fading days, lampooned him as a bloated, drug addled caricature of his iconic persona.

It’s hard to do any damage to a guy by harpooning him when he’s already hoisted himself on his own petard.

In other words…
You can’t parody a parody.
You can’t knock somebody down when they’re already laying there looking up at you.
You can’t take the legs out from underneath somebody who’s already crippled themselves.

Okay, you get the idea.

Elvis would have been 74 this year. And I think those of us who grew up with him always kind of knew, it that place where you just know things, that he wasn’t going to grow old along with us.

The brighter the star, the faster it burns out.

Yada, yada.

In the end, as you will hear when you listen to the video above, he was obviously living in a state of denial.

But, credit where due, he had managed to accomplish something, I offer you, not accomplished before or since.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the greatest Elvis impersonator who ever lived.

Elvis Presley.