Really?

This non-content makes the cover?

It really "made the cover." Really.

Very good point, Verbal. There is no there there, as they say. Is this how the OS editors tell us that they don't give a crap and just look at the tags and the names of the writers?

Trust me. No one gives a crap about my name.

Also, the link to airamerica.com at the bottom of the post doesn't work. Really.

It's not your fault it's on the cover. Really.

Don't forget that Slate is the same fine magazine that published an article last year where the author tried to contend that the characters of Animal House, along with Chevy Chase's character in the Fletch movies, were really conservatives.

Here you go. For additional wing-nut hilarity, read this article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2166941/

Seriously - you will literally laugh out loud at this.

Thanks for the dead link info, Chris. Really. Sorry about the smart-assitude but this has happened before on OS where something I post gets and Editor's Pick or whatever and then I find it getting comment section flack from some in the community. I'm just like, get over it - you know? Just go and blog. Don't look for adulation from the freaking OS editors to confirm your skills or encourage your passion for writing posts. Best.

i also thought that the slate article was more or less bullshit.

it's not that tina fey's character is a conservative, she's just sort of an uptight upper middle class white liberal. and the "real" tina fey pokes fun at the well-meaning liberal idea. it doesn't make her a conservative...it makes her funny..and it means that she's willing to make fun of herself. but srsly, isn't it notoriously common for well-meaning liberals to get to a certain point in life and want to act like wealthy people?

also the slate author fails to take seriously the changes that have happened to jack's character since the first season. i actually only started watching the show this year and was shocked when i went back to rewatch the first two seasons at how much more "bosslike" and more of a threat jack was then. he's all soft and cuddly and fallible now. the slate person mentions this change sort of offhandedly but doesn't take into account what that change means for the show's politics.

ok done using brainpower for this. :P

oh it also pissed me off that the slate guy kept calling tina fey's character an adult who's stuck in a tomboyish adolescence. as if at some point all women who "grow up" start dressing like hot babes and wearing makeup. fuck. i love cheese. and i take my bra off through my shirt when i'm tired just like liz lemon. and i'm not some tomboyish sexless old maid. it's fucking refreshing to see a character on the teevee that actually seems to be more or less like an actual woman.

ALSO the slate guy totally misread the episode about the 1960s woman TV writer. just because she rejects the chaotic radicalism of the 60s doesn't mean that liz lemon is a conservative - it just puts her even more solidly into the well-meaning "safe" upper middle class liberal camp. the show constantly spoofs its own corporate ownership and fealty. this is just another example of that same attitude.

Um...anyone who watches 30 Rock knows that the show is liberal. And hilarious. Nuff said.

I've about had it with Slate. Dear Prudence has become snide and insulting. Jack Schafer rags on and on about something Bill Moyers was supposed to have done 40 years ago, and I can't stand Christopher Beam. The only things I like over there are the human interest stories, the guy who lives on the farm with his dogs and Meghan O'Rourke's series on grief. Weiner was way off base about 30 Rock.

And as for this making the cover, there are tons of posts on the cover that I won't bother with and they've been there for ages. I just dropped in here because I happened to have read the article.

"but perhaps 30 Rock began as a way to explore—and mine for gallows humor—the crisis of identity many liberals began to feel in his second term, when the Karl Rove playbook had seemingly replaced the laws of physics, when the "reality-based community" (including Liz Lemon's Upper West Side) felt like an island populated by the marginal, flip-flopping, arugula-munching few. "

This paragraph is a pretty good summation -- also his statements that as the political winds are shifting so is the political humor on the show. I thought it was a good article with one exception: Liz Lemon only appears to agree with Jack because he is her boss. That is obvious -- she is a liberal with flaws and foibles, he is a conservative born and bred into it, and Gove love him, nothing is ever going to change that.

Oops, meant to write "God love him" -- "Gove" must be Rove in his own mind...

madtypist, thanks for that link.

dorsey shaw, i'd be interested to see some kind of theory as to why conservatives identify so much with fictional characters. here's my evidence:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_dmn_southpark_reps.htm

can i get a wtf? i'm curious if this derives from the same impulse that believes the bible would be a good template for law making. do conservatives view everyone as if they're a fictional character? why would anyone think jack is a character to be emulated? how about cartman or mr. garrison?

seriously, does anyone watch star wars and think, man, that darth vader would make a kick ass president?

The show because it pokes fun at everything including liberals and conservatives, but most of all show business. The point I think Fey
(Whom I think she is smart, funny and super sexy by the way) is trying to make is that both sides of the political spectrum want the same things. They both have their silliness and their good points.

Also, we may be loosing sight of the reality that this is a comedy show meant to make you laugh. God knows we can use some of that in this country. Maybe we should not all take ourselves so seriously is the point of the show.

It seems the hardcore democrats and republicans see plots in everything and some sort of code embedded secretly in shows and art and movies to subvert the faithful. While the extremes on both sides duke it out the rest of the country is moving towards the middle and shows like 30 rock are attracting a bigger audience by doing the same.

I do have a question if Tina is the liberal and Jack is the concervative, what is Kenneth?

If Tina is a liberal, and Jack is a conservative, then that makes Kenneth...ambidexterous?
30 Rock is a show that I DVR and can watch over and over again: hilarious writing and acting. Tina Fey is an over the top liberal in real life and so is Alec Baldwin, which makes it even funnier.

A piece pointing us to another piece is not a bad thing.

Thanks for this.

cool. interesting stuff.

sidenote: comments about what does/doesn't deserve an OS editor's pick strike me as profoundly sad. if someone makes such a comment, they probably need to reevaluate where they are placing Open Salon in their lives, with all due respect. and really, an editor's pick says a lot more about an editor than it does about the pick itself. write to write, not for editorial praise within a blog community, regardless of how wonderful that community may be...but maybe those are just words for a college student who hasnt yet faced the harsh loneliness of the real world. peace.

* "words from..."

Jeepers people! Don't blame writers for being featured by editors! That is, unless, they're getting featured due to completely misleading headlines about nudity...

Thanks for bring this to my attention. It seems rather silly. Fey pokes a lot of fun at herself as a liberal, do-gooder. But it's clear the moments she relents and moves to the dark side, that it is the dark side. We see humor in it, though I don't think we cheer her on, because those of us who are liberals find solace with our own guilt over compromising our principles.

This is the show that had Jack dating a "high profile Bush administration official" with the initials C.R. who was portrayed as being overbearing, codependent, and into "Abu Ghraib role playing." This is the show that had Jack defending a G.E. subsidiary who caused children's skin to turn permanently into bright orange because "there have been no proven bad health effects." This is the show that implied that Jack sodomized the former vice president after the accidental release of a "gay drug" in an underground bunker.

It's like the people who think that The Simpsons espouse a specific point of view. The strength of both shows is that they don't pull punches on anybody. Everybody's fair game.

I have a love-hate relationship with Slate. I appreciate that sometimes they put out stuff that is being heard no where else. They're edgy! But often it's edgy with pretty weak arguments. Christopher Hitchens is a boob. And don't get me started on that unethical quack known as William Saletan.

But the political reporting (Dickerson et al) is consistently good. And their podcasts are top-notch overall. Salon would do well to emulate the podcasting done at Slate.

Dorsey, thanks for bringing this ridiculous piece to our attention. I loved the rebuttal from MisterSparkle who I would like to see on OS with comments like that! "30 Rock" is uneven but generally brilliant. Also, very, very funny, unlike almost every other sitcom on network TV. It actually makes you laugh.

As regards this being on the cover of OS, who knows how they make these choices?? I know it's not your fault nor should you have to take the fall for where your stuff ends up. Unless, of course, you bribed them... which I heartily disapprove of unless it would work for me, which it didn't the 14 times I tried.

i read this slate article yesterday and was flummoxed that the writer was perceiving this slant in a show that to me mocks the conservatives a,d mocks politicos in general. i find i tend to read slate mainly for the unintentional humor these days. :)

Maybe Kenneth represents the centrist party.
Sweet, optimistic and naive to the political ways of the world.