Subtle Line on NBC’s 30 Rock Speaks Volumes about 08 Presidential Race

Authored by Scott Goldberg on April 6, 2007 - 10:23am.
Tina Fey on 30 Rock It came and went fast enough to warrant nothing more than a smile, but the line stuck well past the delivery.  Tina Fey, in the role of Liz Lemon on her NBC hit comedy 30 Rock, dropped one of the most icy, brilliant bits of commentary the 2008 presidential race has seen yet.  Confessing her many shortcomings to the character played by Jason Sudeikis (of Saturday Night Live), Ms. Lemon said, “There is an 80% chance in the next election that I will tell all my friends I am voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain.”

 

Ever the shrewd linguist, Fey drove at the heart of perhaps the biggest issue in the race: Barack Obama may be the most loved candidate, but does anyone have the balls to vote for him?  Not only that, will we once again resort to the old, white, male conservative guard?

 

An interesting commentary on the American voter – and more importantly, perhaps, the American Democrat – one wonders if she’s correct.  Are we a country that wishes for something but is secretly scared to have it?  Do we want change, but secretly like the status quo? 

 

As Liz Lemon said, there’s an 80% chance the answer is yes.

 
Scott Goldberg



Comments

stupid... no one will vote

stupid... no one will vote for mccain unless they support the war in iraq.

Says more about Fey than Democrats at-large

She could have stuck any candidate's name into that joke, but chose McCain because she's met him (he hosted SNL 10/19/02) and likes him (http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/05/112871.aspx). Most of us haven't and don't. It's pretty likely that if someone ran for president whom I actually knew personally, I'd vote for them too.

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