Closing Out National Offend A Feminist Week With Tina Fey

Update: Linked in the sidebar at The Other McCain. And after a long and arduous search, I did find the demographic that does find Tina Fey hysterical.

Update II: Josh Painter at Texan's 4 Palin links as well as Mr. Belvedere over at the Camp of the Saints.

The original posting below:

The soft bigotry of low expectations. The new sexism. And what better time to do so than during National Offend A Feminist Week.

I'm sure Tina Fey is funny in person. But not the laugh out loud funny that people strive to credit her for. Should she tell a joke, it's more of a "Hmmm, that's funny" rather than the "Haha" funny. And she did make some success in the male dominated world of comedy writing. But most of that was because she is a funnyish woman. Not in spite of it. Succeeding up the ladder of success the Politically Correct way.

She's also fallen prey to what I call the "Martin Short Effect". At one time, early in his career, Martin Short was funny. As his success grew, he went from Martin Short the man to Martin Short the image. Where no matter what he did, it was supposed to be funny because he is Martin Short. Jiminy Glick is the best example of that.

But like any good liberal, nothing is ever her fault. If people don't care for her, it's because of sexism. Not because of the way she polarized 50% of the population.

The former “Saturday Night Live” performer and head writer became a household name during the 2008 election, when she returned to the show as a guest with a pitch-perfect impersonation of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Week after week, she poked fun at the Alaska governor for everything from her family foibles to her lightweight answers to reporters’ questions. “I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers,” Fey-as-Palin deadpanned during a spoof of the vice-presidential debate
[. . .]
“No one ever said it was ‘mean’ when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of ‘going too far’ in their political impressions. You see what I’m getting at here,” Ms. Fey writes.

She spent her tour of duty on SNL making fun of the Right to a canned, liberal audience. And those who weren't liberal were being polite in laughing with the crowd so the tires on their car wouldn't be slashed later.

Not just Sarah Palin but Republicans in general. That's not really being funny as much as it is pandering. Edgy, edgy stuff for a mainstream show.

With 30 Rock, she is in essence a newsreader who passes the broadcast off to the Sports, Weather, Traffic and whatever Special Reports are going on.

Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, the blond chick, the actors who play the writers and the dude who plays Kenneth the Page are the ones who bring the funny to that show. And mostly because they pretty much play themselves.

Morgan plays someone who has a tenuous grip on reality and sanity. Baldwin plays a megalomaniac. As I said, not much of a stretch.

Anything really gut busting funny that ever came from Fey on 30 Rock, I chalk it up to coincidence.

But it's not her fault people on the right don't get her ironic jokes. You sexists.