REPORT: HILLARY CLINTON ‘NEGOTIATED LIMITS’ WITH NBC NEWS TO AVOID ‘VICIOUS HUMOR’ ON ‘SNL.’

Contrast SNL producer-creator Lorne Michael’s kid glove treatment of Hillary with how Gerald Ford’s press secretary Ron Nessen was demolished when he stupidly volunteered to host the show in its first season. Michaels’ then-wife (and a writer on the show) admitted afterwards, the goal of the show’s writers was “The President’s watching. Let’s make him cringe and squirm” — and he certainly did.

A big difference though: despite many of them being Democrats, NBC’s elite old guard upper management were genuinely shocked by the tone of Michael’s then-new show; for that same reason, Johnny Carson would have little to do with them, despite sharing virtually all of their politics.

These days, Lorne Michaels, as the producer of both SNL and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is NBC’s upper management, and the tone he instilled via SNL is the tone of NBC-MSNBC-Comcast.

But then, as original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts liked to quip, “you can only be avant-garde for so long, before you become garde.” Or palace guard, in the case of Michaels, who last year was accused by one of his writers of giving Mr. Obama veto power over SNL jokes. Wouldn’t want the president cringing and squirming or anything.