I Am Tina Fey’s Anger Translator
(or Why Every Single Criticism of Tina Fey’s Sheet Cake Sketch is Stoooopiddd with a Capital STOO(L).)
DISCLAIMER: I did not read every single criticism of Tina Fey’s sketch. I read one in The Root, which I often find thought provoking, but was just peevish this time. I scanned the one in The Atlantic. I scanned the results of my Google search. Nevertheless, I can still defend my thesis.
Also, I graduated with Christina Fey (that’s what I called her); I know Christina Fey; And Christina Fey is no softie on Naziism.
Go Cavaliers!
EXPLANATORY NOTE: The reason I wrote “STOO(L)” in the subtitle of this ranty essay is to point out the shitty assonance between the first syllable of stupid and the the word “stool”, which can also mean shit. Suggesting all the stuff I skimmed in-depth is shit.
THE ROLE OF SHIT IN CURRENT AFFAIRS
Shit is something that every American, and increasingly the world is in, to lobe depth, on account of the 2016 election. Shit also sounds like sheet. As in sheet cake. That’s consonance, not assonance, but you get my drift.
One way of hearing Chrissy’s joke was that one could stay home and eat shit cake rather than doing something about speaking up against the Nazis and President Trump. If one then coupled that with the irony of what it looks like to eat one’s feelings (which she illustrated by eating the “shit-cake”) as opposed to acting on them, then one would avoid the mistake of confusing a piece of satire for a fully articulated political program. Then one, especially a liberal one, would avoid finding stoolish reasons to say that Christina was actually proposing that ignoring Nazis would be a viable program of action.
Maybe one has to be outside America to notice the association between eating feelings, obesity, the political sheetcake storm, the obese president, the health-nut Steve Bannon, and Christina’s sketch. Notice I didn’t say cause-effect, just association. Because good art is not prescriptive, it works by association. It leaves you free to reach all kinds of conclusions, even stupid ones that dismiss a funny political sketch although that person clearly agrees with you. And because she doesn’t say exactly the words you think should have been said, in exactly the right tone, to exactly the segment of the public you think she is able to talk to about things like this.
FOOTNOTE TO EXPLANATORY NOTE: I realize that I have not risen to the level of “anger” translator, with the tone of this section. Just snotty.
MY OPINION: Even, I, Christina Fey’s dearest black friend, can say that I do not find it possible to divine her political program from her comedy sketches. Maybe she doesn’t have one as she is not a political organizer. Also, Weekend Update is not an actual news program, so I’ve been told. Therefore, it’s not the best place to seek facts or the elaboration of complex ideas. Even with a direct psychic link to Christina’s anger, I cannot tell exactly what she’s thinking from her sketches. Because, the “Tina Fey” on screen is a performance. What she does there isn’t everything that she thinks. Because, we don’t have time. And believe me, she could go on and on with her Ideas during college (her boldface italics, not mine). I doubt that’s changed.
BUT WAS THERE REALLY A PUN ON SHIT?
Look, I’m the anger translator not her editor. She doesn’t consult me on these matters. It’s possible. It’s also possible that eating cake as a political program (see Marie Antoinette) is so absurd that one shouldn’t take it literally in any way whatsoever. It’s possible there was a pun on shit. There are also about 30 other ways one could glean the intent from this sketch, without coming to the conclusion that Fey was somehow being equivocal in her outrage. You don’t have to be a mind reader to come up with this shit. However, if you’re a stay at home dad, who works part-time, and you want to avoid folding that fucking laundry — then you can write shit like this nearly any day of the week.
THE PART WHERE THE BLACK GUY ATE THE CAKE TOO — HE ALSO CLEARLY WAS BEING CO-OPTED BY TINA FEY’S CAKE STRATEGY.
NO!!!
NOÔŒºÖÒÓÕØŌ00OOO0OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOÔŒºÖÒÓÕØŌ !!!
No, you fucking semi-mythical, but only semi-, liberal douche, who is on the same side as me.
No, that was not co-opting. Co-opting is when someone offers a brain surgeon a chance to run a massive federal department as a fig leaf doubling as a symbolic swipe at minorities, and the brain surgeon in question is so un-self aware that he takes the job: that’s co-opting. What Michael Che did was a joke, because the cake was not a strategy. It’s symbolic shit. And everything that issues from the cake is not a strategy, it’s shit. We went over that. Perhaps if ´Stina (another pet name) had eaten actual shit, it would have been clearer.
NO, THAT WOULD HAVE JUST BEEN —
Shut up.
Maybe Michael Che eating the cake meant that even sane black people wish they could just turn away from the news cycle, which features a sorry parade of white hypocrites, like the Honorable Paul Ryan, and worse, who are blinkered by race and committed to oligarchy. But you couldn’t get that from the sketch if you were focused on the cake as an actual strategy. Which it wasn’t. It wasn’t even the suggestion of a strategy. But you can’t get that if you’re focused on policing the speech of people whom you would otherwise embrace and call: Ally.
WHEN DID THESE ALL CAPS INTERLUDES BECOME A DEVICE TO POINT UP THE BALEFUL LIBERAL HABIT OF SPEECH POLICING ALLIES, AND THE VOICE OF SOMEONE TO BROWBEAT WITH SNOTTY COMMENTARY, INSTEAD OF HEADINGS MEANT TO ORIENT THE READER?
After My Opinion.
WHY DID YOU CALL HER CHRISTINA IN COLLEGE?
I didn’t.
Didn’t you recognize how I was ripping off Lloyd Bentsen’s put down of Dan Quayle for my own purposes? It’s okay if you didn’t, you’re probably younger than me. Tina Fey wouldn’t know me from Sally Hemings, except that I’m male, her contemporary, and not the concubine of a President.
SINCE YOU BROUGHT UP THE SALLY HEMINGS JOKE….
SHUT! UP! Shut your liberal cake hole. It was funny and it was supposed to make you uncomfortable, and it was smart, and it pointed up the layers — like a cake, if you want to be rhetorical about it — of racist legacy that Americans have yet to digest. AND WHAT SHE SAID IS “JUST A JOKE” — BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T COERCE SALLY HEMINGS, THOMAS JEFFERSON DID! SHE’S POINTING IT OUT WHILE MANY, MANY AMERICANS ARE PROBABLY NOT UP ON THE WHOLE SALLY HEMINGS THING, OR, IF THEY ARE, CHOOSE NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT MUCH.
See, the cake wasn’t a strategy, it was an image. It was also a cake too. She ate it. She was swallowing what America dishes up in its schools and commenting on it. See how that’s not accommodating the status quo?
YOU’RE LOUD. JUST SAYING.
I am a classically trained actor and an anger translator.
BUT SHE WAS DIMINISHING SLAVERY BY MAKING JOKES ABOUT IT.
It is beyond Tina Fey’s power to diminish or enlarge slavery. It’s a well documented fact. Slavery, that is. And whether or not you bring humor to bear on the subject is your business. However, if you think you’re helping black people by demanding that white people only talk about slavery in hushed tones of shamed reverence, then you aren’t helping anyone.
My ancestors survived actual slavery. Other ancestors survived systemic exclusion from opportunity. Some have had their lives disfigured by it. Racism is still disfiguring lives. It usually doesn’t kill white people, but in Charlottesville it did. Observances of racial decorum in language used by lefties should be way down the list of things to spill ink over. If Saturday Night Live doesn’t satisfy every unwritten liberal diktat concerning racial decorum, the sky is not going to fall. Same for Bill Maher saying “house nigger”. The joke was lazy and unfunny. But nobody died when he said it. Nobody was sold down the river. Nobody was coerced into sex, when he tried to use a racial trope to make an attempt at self-deprecation.
LIBERAL DIKTAT? …ARE YOU CALLING ME A…I MEAN I’M JUST IMAGINARY, SO I’M NOT REALLY OFFENDED…BUT HOW WE TALK MATTERS, DOESN’T IT?
You’re only semi-imaginary, and your “I’m not really offended” is just a passive-aggressive way of saying you think I’m being offensive, when really I’m just being a bit boisterous. Anyway, yes how we talk matters. Speech is everywhere — but it isn’t everything. Your obsession with it borders on thought policing, ergo “diktat”. Capiche?
OKAY, BUT —
And before you come out with another bit of enlightened wisdom, the joke Fey made about not sitting next to Michael Che, could, I think be fairly interpreted to mean: “I know left wing holier-than-thou types will look for even the slightest reason to speech-police me, even though I think it’s pretty clear what I’m about; but I’ll make the joke just to see if anybody gets it.” Or maybe not —maybe I’m over-thinking it.
But you don’t have to be Tina Fey’s anger translator, or some kind of genius to see what she was up to; but hey, I lied about knowing Tina Fey in college, so maybe this is all sheet cake, (see I’m re-inforcing the cake/shit trope that it seems like a shit-ton of commentators missed).
THIS WAS LIKE A WEEK AGO?
Yeah, I live in Switzerland. I don’t always have my finger on the pulse.
SO, BASICALLY YOU’RE SAYING I SHOULDN’T BE CRITICIZING TINA FEY ON HER CAKE BIT?
Do whatever you want. But don’t criticize a piece of satire for not being an explicit political program that hews to your particular way of wanting someone to express themselves and then adopt the posture that you know what really matters. Let’s try to stop winning the Who Is More Woke Newlywed Game that seems to consume discourse on the left and realize the game is Jeopardy.
UH…GAME SHOW ALLUSIONS? ….NEWLYWED GAME…BOB EUBANKS — HE MADE A JEW JOKE IN Roger and Me? WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH TINA FEY?
It doesn’t matter what he said. Bob Eubanks is dead. He may have been dead while he was hosting the Newlywed Game, who knows? What I’m trying to say is:
Stop with the racial decorum shit.
Stop with having all the answers and find the right fucking questions.
We’ve got 1165 days and 9 hours to take back the White House.
Focus on the opposition.