Emily Litella – a character played by Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live. SNL has always featured a news segment called “Weekend Update”. In the early years, Weekend Update was hosted by Chevy Chase or Jane Curtin and often featured a correspondent named 'Emily Litella'. Emily was an elderly character with hearing difficulty. Her tirades would inevitably be based entirely on a misunderstanding of the intended topic. For example discussion on the 'death penalty' would turn into a tirade on the concept of a 'deaf penalty', saying “Deaf people have enough problems as it is!” Inevitably Litella's tirade would be interrupted in full flow by the anchor, who would loudly insist on the actual topic, leaving Litella to meekly state her catch-phrase, “Never mind.”
