American TV show mimics and mocks fake South African Sign Interpreter at Nelson Mandela Memorial
That “sign language guy” just won’t go away.
The South African deaf interpreter who signed what amounted to gibberish during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service last week was spoofed in the opening skit on the latest “Saturday Nigh Live”, by actors portraying both him and President Obama.
Ersatz signer Thamsanqa Jantjie “clearly had no idea what he was doing,” Obama, played by cast member Jay Pharaoh, said in the spoof presidential address — only to be joined at the podium moments later by a grinning and gesticulating Kenan Thompson.
“We have our best people working on it,” “Obama” insisted of the Obamacare website woes, as Thompson used both hands to trace the silhouette of a curvaceous woman and then flashed two thumbs up.
Pharaoh soon summoned a pair of fake Secret Service agents to drag the fake signer away.
The real Jantjie has enjoyed a several-day press run, with his Johannesburg performance drawing the ire of
deaf groups and later revelations surfacing that he is under investigation for crashing the memorial and had previously been probed for murder.
SNL also spoofed Obama’s embarassing “selfie” last week with the prime ministers of Denmark and Britain, having Pharaoh pose for a snap with Kate McKinnon, who portrayed German Prime Minister Angela Merkel begging for her own cellphone snap with the president.
“I think you owe me one after the wiretapping mein cellphone thing,” she insists, before promising, “I won’t gutentag that on Fratbook.”
Watch the Video below:
