All posts tagged "Tina Fey"

The great paradox of social justice movements is that they exist to eradicate themselves.  Think, for instance, of the abolitionist movement.  Once the goal of ending slavery was achieved, there was no more abolitionist movement.  This is what we all want for our movements.

Tina Fey made Sarah Palin the butt of many jokes with her impersonation on Saturday Night Live during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Saturday Night Live sketches about wacky encounters with census workers don't seem as bizarre as some of the headlines floating across the web this week.

[rebelmouse-image 24749163 original_size="300x229" expand=1]Overthinking It tackles the all-important question that consumes many of my politically astute friends who are also fans of "30 Rock": where does the show's politics lay? (They also recently had me on as a guest podcast panel member again, always fun.) On its surface, "30 Rock" seems liberal, but if you're a fan who watches every episode, you start to get the creeping feeling that the show endorses reactionary politics. Mlawski marshals the evidence: Liz isn't as liberal as she seems, Jack usually wins, the show did that unforgiveable and "South Park"-esque episode taking a shot at affirmative action. I've personally wrestled with this question repeatedly. Is the show trenchant liberal satire, or is it so puffed up with wealthy privilege that they're starting to drift into apologies for weird conservative politics? But reading the Overthinking It piece, I realized that the answer is simple: Neither. The show isn't liberal or conservative so much as it's cynical.

Did you know that comic books have a professional obligation to refrain from expressing political opinions, at least of the variety that could convince readers to vote for Democrats? Neither did I. But apparently, it's supposed to be an earth-shaking scandal that Spiderman is paling around with Obama in one of the latest issues. Newsbuster told me so.

This Vanity Fair profile of Tina Fey is both intriguing and unbelievably irritating, because Maureen Dowd wrote it. Dowd is more than a little obsessed with Fey's looks (though it's depressing but interesting that Fey had to lose 30 pounds and learn to ape the sexy librarian look before she got to be on TV---it's the sort of thing that makes even the most ardent feminist stick to salad if she wants to get anywhere in this world), and it even seems like Dowd really can't comprehend a woman who has a big but not ugly scar on her face who might not really care that much about it. She quotes "30 Rock" against Fey, her friends, and her husband's relative indifference to the scar, as if it reveals the real truth.