Etta Munsen

Etta Munsen is a fictional character mentioned in an October 7, 2000 skit on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. While satirizing the ongoing presidential debates between Smith County native and then-Vice President Al Gore and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, Darrell Hammond (as Gore) told a tale of an impoverished senior citizen living in White County who he personally knew. This was making fun of Gore's attempts to seem more human by injecting personal interest stories into his speeches and appearances, which some suspected he embellished for maximum emotional effect. The mock debate went as follows:
: Jim Lehrer: Governor Bush, both you and the Vice-President have offered plans to provide prescription drugs for the elderly. What makes your plan superior? 
:Al Gore: Jim, I'd like to interrupt here and answer that question as if it were my turn to speak. Jim, let me tell about a friend of mine. [ holds up a picture of an elderly woman ] Her name is Etta Munsen. She's 94, she's a widow living on Social Security in Sparta, Tennessee. Etta was born with only one kidney. She also suffers from poilo, spinal menengitis, lung, liver, and pancreatic cancer, an enlarged heart, diabetes, and a rare form of styctic acne. Now, several recent strokes, along with an unfortunate shark attack, have left her paralyzed and missing her right leg under the knee. Just last week she woke from a coma to find that, due to a hospital mix-up, her left arm had been amputated, infected with syphillis, and then reattached. 
:Jim Lehrer: Mr. Vice-President, we are short of time.. 
:Al Gore: As you can imagine, Jim.. Etta's prescription drug bills are staggering. They run to nearly $113 million a day! And she tells me that some weeks she has to choose between eating and treating her Lyme Disease. Now, under my plan, Etta's prescription drugs would be covered. Under my opponent's plan, her house would be burned to the ground. And that is wrong. That is just wrong! 
:Jim Lehrer: Governor Bush? Response? 
:George W. Bush: I believe that some of those figures may be in-ock-urate. 
:Al Gore: Jim, what you just heard from my opponent is an attack on my integrity and my character. And I will not reply in kind. Instead, I will take those remarks and tuck them away, away in a tiny "lock-box", where all bad thoughts go. 
==References==
*"00a: Rob Lowe / Eminem: First Presidential Debate." http://snltranscripts.jt.org/00/00adebate.phtml n.d. Web. Accessed 30 July 2014.
Category:Fictional people
Category:2000 election