The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Another Reason to Love Tina Fey (Are Any More Necessary?)

    By AmericanDreamer on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 12:34pm |

    In a part of her speech accepting the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor last Tuesday night, she said the rise of conservative women in politics like Sarah Palin is good for all women,

    unless you don't want to pay for your own rape kit...unless you're a lesbian who wants to get married to your partner of 20 years...[or] unless you believe in evolution.

    Those remarks were not included in the PBS-televised version of her speech on Sunday night.  Included in the televised version were the following parts of her speech:

    I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn't thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight.  My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me.  All kidding aside, I'm so proud to represent American humor, I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to make my home in the 'not real' America.  And I am most proud that during trying times, like an orange [terror] alert, a bad economy or a contentious election, that we as a nation retain our sense of humor.

    HT to Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger for their "The Reliable Source" column in today's WashPost. 

    Comments

    As you say, didn't need another reason, but that is excellent and I missed it so thanks.  Also worth highlighting for anyone who didn't catch it is this excellent piece in Vanity Fair on Fey.  I particularly enjoyed the quote about Fey being the modern sex symbol for all men who don't move their lips while they read.  That's not inaccurate.  


    by Jamie Friedland on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 12:12pm

    LOL! I didn't think this post would get much, if any, comment and almost didn't publish it.  At the time I did, the post it bumped off the "From the Readers" list was my own, and was no longer active.  

    And in other news...(for NBA/men's pro basketball fans) which star NBA point guard will next divorce?  :<) 


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 12:28pm

    I didn't comment because I don't care for her one iota, and didn't want to be harshin' yer mellow...   Cool  I don't find her remotely funny.  Ever.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 1:19pm

    Can't tell if you're kidding or not.  Either way, it's all good...


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 3:08pm

    I can't tell either, especially after brew's comment below. I've found her funny, but I didn't watch her when she was a regular on SNL. I enjoy her on 30 Rock, and I enjoyed her Sarah Palin sketches, and that's primarily what I think of when I think of how funny she is.


    by Atheist (not verified) on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 3:10pm

    I didn't watch her when she was a regular on SNL. I enjoy her on 30 Rock, and I enjoyed her Sarah Palin sketches, and that's primarily what I think of when I think of how funny she is.

    Yes, likewise, so I couldn't comment on brewman's comments.


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 3:13pm

    Not kidding a bit.  If I were to compare her to say, Gilda Radnor, Fey would get a 'One' or 'Two', and Radnor a 'Ten' on that sort of scale.  (Pardon me for comparing her to another woman, it's just that Radnor may be my all-time favorite comic.)

    Self-conscious humor is almost always bad, and she is overly self-aware, as though watching herself try to be funny.  Misses almost always, including her timing, which is crucial when you are doing someone else's jokes.

    If I think of natural comics, they are ones who are funny on a dime, as in able to ad lib.  Can't imagine Fey as funny, and in fact, when I've seen her on Letterman, say, she bores the crap outta me, though now shes going for the Sexiest Woman on the Planet image. 

    I'd go with Brew on this one--the writing started being more toilet/fart jokes, retard jokes,  amputee jokes, dysfunctional children disses, etc.  Can't say how that reflects the comics they write for, but I've always understood the 'stars' go to the writers with pitches. 

    I don't watch many, if any sitcoms except a few British ones at bedtime, so I don't know about 30 Rock.  First time I saw Palin, I said how much she resembled Fey, and then they were off to the races on that.  She was good as Palin, but it didn't change my mind about her being funny.  SNL got increasingly low-rent, IMO, but once they did the poking-fun-at-blind-David-Patterson crap, I pretty much quit watching.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 4:29pm

     

    " ... but once they did the poking-fun-at-blind-David-Patterson crap, I pretty much quit watching."

    You mean, as opposed to the early years when then head-writer Michael O'Donoghue (Mr. Mike) did this blind joke with guest host Ray Charles:

    “You know, we’ve kidded Ray a lot tonight, but blindness is nothing to kid about. So, we at “Saturday Night,” with the network, set up sort of a matching fund and we were able to purchase this lovely painting in appreciation of Ray Charles and the courageous example he sets for all of us — besides being one heck of a good sport. And, so, in Ray’s name, we’re donating this painting to the Lighthouse of the Blind, in the hope that someday all will be able to see it. Let me just, uh, pull the string here and give you to look at what I’m talking about. ["Mr. Mike" removed the covering to reveal a frame without a painting, just big red block letters that read: PLEASE DON'T TELL HIM!] (Mr Mike continued:) "It was painted in 1909 by the French Impressionist Claude Monet and it’s entitled, as you may have already guessed, “The Old Windmill.” Uh, there’s that shimmering iridescence, the, uh, subtle interplay between light and shadow that Monet was famous for. Hard to describe really, you sort of have to see it.”

    So, don't tell me that SNL suddenly went tasteless. They've been doing this kind of stuff from the beginning.  I was in the studio for that joke, and it was hilarious.

     

     


    by MrSmith1 on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 5:12pm

    And Paterson not as offended as some might imagine:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/26/david-patersons-snl-appea_n_739...

    will stick up for his visually disabled brethren but not for New Jersey. Laughing

    I saw most of the parodies of Paterson, and as somone who is sensitive to this kind of thing because I have a disabled adult brother, I didn't find them offensive. Mainly because they depicted him as a real person with bad sides and good sides and also a handicap that is a problem in daily life, not as a ptiiable useless dummy. The Paterson parody character was smart and wisecracking, he'd just get slipped up from looking cool by his handicap. Pity is one of the worst things for the disabled.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 5:36pm

    Well, gosh, Mr. Smith, I won't tell you anything about it; taste and humor are very individual.  Missed the Ray Charles sketches, but if were there, he approved it.

    Not advocating 'pitying' the blind, AA; but the crossed eyes were dickish, IMO, and the segment I saw didn't have him wise-cracking one bit.  Lenny Bruce, one of my favorite comics, said that no subject is beyond humor; but you have to do it well.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 5:57pm

    Patterson does have a lazy, crossed eye, Fred Armesan merely exaggerated it ever so slightly for comedic effect.  


    by MrSmith1 on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 6:30pm

    Well, she makes me laugh, anyway.  Like I said, it's all good...

    Which comedians and comediennes do you like these days, stardust and others?


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 6:21pm

    It took me awhile to figure out why I disliked the Fey-era SNL so much.  I was a young teenager when the show started, and it made being stuck at home on a Saturday night not so bad (and provided a bored small-town boy with much needed doses of urban sophistication).

    Back in those days, SNL stuck it to the big shots; politicians, pompous establishment types and sleazy operators.  Under Fey, they started picking on the misfits, losers, and weaklings.  I guess there's a reason she was so good at capturing the speech and the actions of the mean girls in the movie of the same name.


    by brewmn on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 2:03pm

    I'm with you, Dreamer, I think she's a gifted comedy writer and performer. She knows how to craft a joke and does not hesitate at poking fun at herself and her contemporaries, as opposed to just taking easy potshots at the usual targets. (Not that she doesn't take the low hanging fruit when it's there, she does, but SNL, especially in the early years, took mostly easy shots. Granted there was a LOT of low-hanging fruit at that time. LOL)  Tina just thinks funny, and is willing to go where the comedy is, which is the probably the highest praise I can give.


    by MrSmith1 on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 2:21pm

    I would like to disagree MrSmith in my opinion Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner not only how to craft a joke but they excelled at delivering the punch line.  One might say that their main goal was to make you the viewer laugh, whether it was making fun of themselves or take the easy potshots, one never got the sense that they were aware of how popular they were or if they were they didn't let show during the skit  unlike Tina. It's sad when someone has to toot their own horn during a interview. If she was secure or comfortable with her reputation then she would have said what she said right??


    by Where the white... on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 7:34pm

    Oh, I'm not dissing the original SNL cast at all. They were fantastic performers and all of them knew how to craft a joke. Most of them were veterans of Second City. either in Chicago or Toronto.  SNL also had an incredible staff of young writers in those days.  I was hired as an NBC page about six months before SNL started, so I worked on the show from the very beginning and I also worked there briefly as an audio assist and cable puller before moving on to another job at NBC.  (I left NBC in early 1985, after being diagnosed with a chronic degenerative disease.)  One of my proudest moments during that part of my life was when Dan Ackroyd offered to buy a joke that I written. Of course, it was just one joke out of a couple of pages of material that I had given him and that he had graciously agreed to read and give me feedback on, but nevertheless ... Of course, the biggest single regret of my life came about the same time, which was when John Belushi, (who had turned me on to Kurosawa movies and actor Tishiro Mifune by suggesting I go see "The Samarai Saga"). asked me to go out drinking with him one evening, but I was working tech and had a job to do, so I had to turn him down. Yeah, I know, pretty stupid.  Although that was a whole lifetime ago, it still makes me wonder about what might have been ...  Life is full of twists and turns, isn't it?


    by MrSmith1 on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 8:23pm