Saturday Night Live skit takes jab at Chattahoochee whitewater course

The Chattahoochee River whitewater course got an pop culture mention over the weekend during a Saturday Night Live skit featuring actors playing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken.

For the second consecutive week, actress Kate McKinnon did a less than flattering satire of the former Alabama senator. Actor Alex Moffat portrayed Franken, an SNL alum.

The set up for the line about the white water course came as the Sessions character was talking about how close he and Franken were during part of the Weekend Update skit.

“I once took Al white-water rafting on the Chat-TA-Hoochee River and Al showed me Jew stuff,” McKinnon said in an overblown Southern dialect.

Moffat’s character quickly countered, “We had lunch at a deli, Jeff.”

The skit was playing off Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January when Franken asked him about the Russian involvement in last year’s election.

Even though the reference came in a politically charged environment, Whitewater Express owner Dan Gilbert said the mention can’t do anything but help as the fifth season of rafting gets underway on the 2.5 mile course into downtown Columbus and Phenix City.

“You can’t beat the fact that we made it into pop culture,” Gilbert said Monday afternoon. “We have made a lot of strides since 2013, that’s for sure.”

Gilbert, the lone outfitter on the river, would like to find a way to capitalize on the SNL mention.

“That’s hilarious,” he said. “What we need to do is get Al Franken and Jeff Sessions on the Chattahoochee. The only question is would you put them in one raft or two.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2017 at 1:33 PM with the headline "Saturday Night Live skit takes jab at Chattahoochee whitewater course."