TV: The Appalling

Homophobia and racism, we are told, are not on our side. No, it's only the right-wing that exhibits those despicable traits. However, there are claims and there are facts. And, unfortunately for two overly praised TV pets last week, facts collided with claims.




Most untruthful tales start with a huckster. We were reminded of that last week when Old Man Moyers was on Democracy Now! and felt the need to declare of Jon Stewart, "And Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it’s marinated in humor." It's that sort of hyperbole that's damaged The Daily Show on Comedy Central.

Last week, The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik twice (here and here) attempted to inject some reality into the public discourse. He was critiquing Stewart's efforts at addressing the topic of texts and Anthony Weiner. On that, we'll just note that when you bring on a wheel with a dildo attached to it for a joke (as Stewart did), you're no longer commenting from above, you are in the sewer.

Though Zurawik focused on Weiner-gate, we saw other things that disturbed us far more. (For those who don't use links, Zurawik felt that Stewart let Weiner off too easy and that Stewart needed to apologize for his previous attacks on CNN for covering the story.)

He interviewed some nothing that we won't bother to identify by name because it's not our policy to promote deceit or deceitful books. The 'author' was on to talk about Osama bin Laden apparently. He was telling Jon Stewart that (a) it was right to invade Pakistan's national soveriegnty and to give the Pakistani government no heads up, (b) it was right to dump his body in the sea and (c) it was right not to release any photos.

Anyone of those three is a controversial position -- except on basic cable where Jon Stewart comfortably resides. He agreed with the thug and congratulated the thug on helping him see that the public's right to know really wasn't that important.

We have watched in horror as Jon Stewart has turned himself into The Fourth Stooge in order to even slightly critique the Barack Obama administration (with a lot of funny voices and yuck-yucks) but that did not prepare us for what we saw in that interview.

But even that didn't prepare us for the racism. We don't watch The Daily Show regularly. Until this week, the last time we caught it was when Jon was interviewing Michael Steele after Steele was no longer the RNC Chair. We cringed at that encounter because it included a puppet of Steele and a voice. This was apparently a regular feature. We were seeing it for the first time. It didn't sound a bit like Michael Steele to us but maybe we were missing something?

We were willing to consider that might be the case. But then came last week and we caught him ridiculing Herman Cain. First, he ridiculed Tim Pawlenty for addressing issues. This in an episode whose premise was that real news had been missed to focus on gossip. (NOT WORK SAFE -- there's a dildo in the video, click here to watch.) Then they play a clip of Cain espousing that if he was president, he would make sure that no bill was longer than three pages. Since Congress writes the bills, the only way any president could 'enforce' that would be to refuse to sign any bill passed that happened to be over three pages. We didn't really agree with him but it wasn't a big deal to us either way. (But then we don't look to Think Progress for our daily talking point of how awful Republicans are and how wonderful we are.) Maybe Republicans agree this is a big issue? We don't know, we're not Republicans and haven't spoken to any about length of bills. Regardless, whether you agreed with him or not, racism wasn't a valid response.


Yet again, we were hearing that voice.

The same one that bothered us when it was used for a Michael Steele puppet.

Since neither Steele nor Cain speak like Fred Sanford (the character made famous by Red Foxx), why the hell does Jon Stewart insist upon voicing them that way?

And is no one aware how racist that comes off?

(We'll assume you know what Michael Steele actually sounds like. If you don't know what Herman Cain speaks like, click here for this Washington Unplugged video by CBS News.)

It's really amazing to grasp that the same core group of people who hiss "racist!" at every Republican are watching these racist portrayals of Michael Steele and Herman Cain on The Daily Show and laughing. These are Amos & Andy portrayals and they need to stop. We didn't jump to the conclusion when we saw it with Steele months ago. We were willing to wait and forget it if it didn't come up again. But now it has. And it is racist and it needs to stop.

Notice how we did that? We called it out and we spoke clearly and we didn't turn it into a joke or rush to assure you that Jon Stewart has a pure heart. Remember that.

Yes, boys and girls, we're now moving on to the other overly praised in the Water Cooler's Petting Zoo, Tina Fey.

Tracy Morgan acts on 30 Rock. He has done so despite having to report for work with an ankle bracelet because he was on probation. He has done so despite numerous homophobic remarks -- in comedy club appearances and out of them. Until last week, it was never a big deal to NBC or Tina Fey. But last week, Morgan's 'antics' made the news. See Betty's "Tracy Morgan is disgusting," Rebecca's "the disgusting tracy morgan," Marcia's "Morgan, Fey and Baldwin treat homophobia as a joke," and Mike's "Idiot of the week: Ron Nyswaner" for details about Morgan's homophobic rant onstage which included threatening violence on his own son should his son turn out to be gay, insisting women who said they were lesbians just hated men, stating that being gay was a "choice" and much more.

It was disgusting and it was appalling. As the pressure built, Morgan knew he had to do something and, on Friday, he issued a written statement that did not disavow any of his remarks. His written statement said he went "too far" but it did not say that he didn't believe what he stated onstage.

Tina Fey felt the need to . . . Get attention. So she wrote what she thought was a humorous piece. And some idiots loved it. Denise Guguay gushed "Ain't Tina Fey just the best?" (Montreal Gazette). Uh, no, she isn't. When we called out the racism earlier in this piece, we did so. We did so clearly. Tina Fey elected to turn it into a writing piece, a humor piece.

That undercuts any power it might have had because it stops being about what happened and becomes about how 'clever' Tina Fey is.

She's clever enough to have gotten through five seasons and counting of homophobia on 30 Rock, that's for sure. We've called it out before but let's revisit since somewhere Tracy Morgan got the idea that it was okay to be homophobic. Maybe he got it from the 30 Rock scripts?

Take the final episode this year, "Respawn." To shake Jack out of his depression over Avery being held hostage in North Korea, Liz decides to make him angry. Where's the first place she goes? Two women adopting a child together.

When people say 30 Rock has jumped the shark, it's moments like that they can point to. The third episode of the first season had Jack doing what to Liz? Fixing her up on a blind date with a friend of his named "Thomas," Gretchen Thomas. If Jack were opposed to two women being together, would he be arranging dates? No.

That third episode was probably the last time 30 Rock addressed gay issues without being insulting. We catalogued many examples last February. We didn't include "Respawn" because it hadn't aired. We also didn't include "Klaus and Greta" (episode nine of season four). But in that episode, Liz outs her cousin Randy who then shows up in NYC to stay with her. Randy goes clubbing and is seen the next morning with a clear-to-white sticky substance that has dried on his face and "SLUT" written in marker across his forehead while talking about 'activities' -- "I meant to wash it off. But when I got into the bathroom everything started up again."

Tracy Morgan didn't need to learn homphobia in his personal life, he could encounter it near weekly on 30 Rock where the few gay characters that do exist are promiscuous men who mince around and "gay" is used as an insult and punchline by all characters. "Plan B" hadn't aired last February, so we didn't mention it either. But that episode was the return of Devon Banks (Will Arnett), the gay character to appear most frequently on the show. Devon now has a husband (unseen) and they have babies.

But this being 30 Rock and Devon being gay, he can't have babies, he has "gaybies." How is that funny and who in their right mind would think it was acceptable to call babies that? On top of that, Devon uses one of the babies (the one with the best cheekbones) to get ahead at work and even vomits on himself and passes it off as the baby's vomit. And then in a moment that if it had happened to a woman character would have resulted in outrage, Devon gets the big promotion he's always wanted but . . . falls apart because he'd have to leave the triplets. Strange that they've never thought to put that scene with a straight man but automatically go there when presenting a gay character. Someone needs to explain not only to Tracy Morgan but to Tina Fey that gay men are not women with penises.

Tracy Morgan may have thought he could treat gays like freaks in part because that's how 30 Rock has repeatedly treated gay people.

For Tina Fey to show up with her 'hilarious' little essay was not only hypocritical, it also turned the whole thing into a joke. Wanda Sykes called out Tracy Morgan and Roland Martin (Martin for defending the homophobic remarks):

I fault the TN lawmakers. They've created an anti-gay environment. Don't believe Tracy would be so ignorant in LA. I do believe in free speech, but for a youth in TN or any other numerous place, Tracy just yelled, 'Fire,' in a crowded theater.
Ro, I love and respect you, so I feel that I can tell you that your column is some bulls[**]t. We can do better. Tracy has the right to say whatever he wants to say, just like we have the right to say, not acceptable. and WE as a country. We used to picnic to watch public hangings, but WE figured out, that was some sick s[**]t.

Wanda doesn't turn it into a joke. Why not? She's funnier than Tina Fey could ever dream of being. But Wanda's also married and she and her wife Alex are the parents of twins. It's not an abstract or a joke to Wanda, it's very real and she knows that.


When someone like Wanda lays it bare, it makes Tina Fey's exercise in written masturbation all the more appalling. It also makes Tina's rush to assure people Tracy Morgan can't really be homophobic more transparent. In a case of life imitates bad art, her chronically low rated TV show grew even more low rated when Tracy Morgan's role had to be reduced for health reasons.


At their best, Jon Stewart and Tina Fey can make America laugh. But somewhere along the way, the Water Cooler Set decided they were Mark Twain (Tina's even won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor) and geniuses who must be praised non-stop. That's resulted in both of them growing increasingly lazy and in one airing racists skits and the other embracing homophobia pretty much non-stop. Both would have benefitted from serious critical appraisals but the Water Cooler Set didn't want to do that job, it was too heavy and, goodness, people might not like you. In their silence, they are as much as fault as Jon Stewart and Tina Fey.

And for anyone who thinks, "They've barely touched on Tracy Morgan," we made our thoughts known on him long ago. We don't need to revisit it. We have nothing to atone for. After all, we didn't sit down with him and chuckle over his saying this on Saturday Night Live.

I don't need to hear him sing to know I don't like it. I just think he's bizarre. I mean, you're a real dude. You be fixing your transmissions and everything, man. That dude is fruit of cake, man, sweet like bear meat.

For those who can't figure that out, Tracy Morgan is expressing homophobia in that skit from Saturday Night Live (written by Tina Fey). We don't find Tracy Morgan funny. We certainly didn't enable his homophobia by writing those lines or, worse, by playing that on NPR. But Terry Gross, didn't she? And never explored the homophobia. She spent 39 minutes on air with him in October of 2009 (and decided the repulsive interview made for 'holiday' repeats) and, of all the SNL skits, she picks that one to go with. She promotes the homophobia, she gives it her stamp of approval. We wouldn't piss on Tracy Morgan if he were on fire (to steal from the late, great Cass Elliot) but we're under no delusions that a huge portion of the 'left' has been waiving through repulsive behavior, encouraging it, for some time now. It's past time the Water Cooler Set took some accountability.