Newsgasm: And the Emmy goes to Chevy Chase!

The best Sweeps promos on television right now have to be to be NBC’s teases for Friday night’s Law & Order, with Chevy Chase in the midst of a Clark Griswold-style, anti-Semitic meltdown:

“Screw you, Sugar Ti–”

“You’re a Jew, right?”

Whoever came up with the idea of using old Chevy– who sounds funny even when he’s seriously enraged at Howard Stern– to stand in for Mel Gibson in the latest “ripped from the headlines” episode definitely deserves the corner office.The obvious bad acting, combined with Chevy’s own history with substance abuse and rage, leads to a guaranteed classic that’s right up there with Jerry Lewis’ recent dramatic turn on Law & Order SVU.

Chevy plays a celebrity who unleashes an anti-Semitic screed after he’s pulled over for drunk driving. Of course, a few plot twists protect NBC from a Gibson lawsuit in the “In Vino (not tequila) Veritas”: Chevy plays a sitcom star with a recently-cancelled series, and according to producers, “a body is found– though in a slightly untraditional way.”

Ironic, in a way, that Saturday Night Live, the NBC show that made Chevy famous, got its only real buzz– and laughs– last Saturday night by turning over the cold open to Sacha Baron Cohen for an anti-Semitic Borat informercial. Watch your back, Howie.

Meanwhile, somebody who’s good with video clips ought to get hold of Chevy’s Law & Order interrogation scene, cut out the ADA and insert Eddie Bracken’s reactions to Clark’s climactic WallyWorld speech from National Lampoon’s Vacation.