According to this not-completely-unconvincing argument from Slate, it just might be…

The show's central tension remains the tug of war between Fey's Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. Their head butting doubles as an argument about the viability of liberal ideals and the allure of a pragmatic, colder-eyed conservatism — and it's remarkable how often the show sides with the latter…

This message is nowhere more striking than in the episode in which Liz hires an idol of her youth, the '70s comedy writer Rosemary Howard (Carrie Fisher). Rosemary hails from the heyday of feminist television comedy, and she encourages Liz to "push the envelope" in her own writing, to antagonize the powers that be the same way Rosemary once antagonized H.R. Haldeman. An irritated Jack axes them both, at which point Liz discovers that Rosemary chugs wine from a Thermos and lives in a sketchy outer-borough neighborhood ("Little Chechnya," ingeniously). The denouement is brutal. Rosemary has been driven mad, poor, barren, and obsolete by her lifelong commitment to radical ideals, and a horrified Liz flees to Jack's office, begs for her job back, and asks him to help her "do that thing that rich people do, make money into more money."

This structure appears often on 30 Rock: Liz starts from a progressive perspective before coming around to Jack's way of seeing things… [W]e seem meant to accept Liz's Jack-ward drift, if not cheer it on outright, as part of her maturation. Jack is a target of the show's ridicule, but even as his worldview is satirized, it's often presented as inevitable.

I'm not completely won over by Jonah Weiner's argument. But I also don't want to take any chances here and accidentally get brainwashed into considering political views that I don't already hold. I ain't got time for that kind of complex thinking stuff in my busy life. So, I'd better just stop watching the show, right? Just in case.

Maybe I should replace 30 Rock on my DVR with something that's just completely mindless entertainment and has absolutely no bearing on the subtleties of the real world or potential to affect the way I think.

What time does Countdown with Keith Olbermann come on again?

I can't really tell. That could be her, standing next to Alec Baldwin, in that background portrait. We know that they met on SNL that one time.

On the the other hand, it could just be Tina Fey. Or possibly Bill Kristol. Hard to tell.

Let's zoom in a little and take a closer look…

It's not Bill Kristol. Well, mostly likely not. I have no idea how he dresses off the clock. Let's get in there closer…

Still not sure. Could totally be Sarah Palin, though it's also starting to look a little like DNC chair Tim Kaine. Should we bring this in a little closer? Let's…

If  that's Tim Kaine, he's certainly gotten a lot more amoeba-ish lately. Hmmm… Maybe it's Rush Limbaugh. Goddamnit! I still can't say for sure.

Wait a minute. I've got an idea. Lemme try something real quick…

Oh, yeah. That's her. No doubt about it.

* What if George Bush and Ron Paul were the stars of a comic book adaptation of the movie Roadhouse from 1989? Yeah, but what if?

* Playing poker with Harry Reid has got to be the best money-making enterprise ever invented.

* Turns out that it was Tina Fey and Katie Couric who were the ones exploiting Sarah Palin's manufactured image as a down-home hockey mom maverick. You owe me a Coke.

* The Washington Post is calling Barack Obama "Nixonian" — conservatives, liberals alike despair for appropriate reaction.

* Barack Obama decides to keep yet another Bush appointee on staff.

* Politico: "Daschle floats through Senate hearing" — Sounds to me like somebody needs to call a paranormalist.

I think Eric March expressed our collective shock best when he said, "Wow! Life Magazine still exists?"

It was nice that Tina Fey was willing to be on stage for a solid five minutes with McCain after not even looking Sarah Palin in the eye two weeks ago.

I think I'm going to invest in McCain Fine Gold until the economy gets back on track, myself.

After the fold, John McCain explains that his new campaign strategy for the last three days will be the "Double Maverick," which sounds like something this guy made up.

As we all know, the vice president decides when we go to war, how we tax the citizens and how we tax the citizens, and how we interpret the Constitution…

Don't forget, the president can do nothing without checking with the vice president. It's right there in the Constitution.

According to the vice president, at least.

Well, that's certainly unfair. I mean, if not for Tina Fey, America would surely see Sarah Palin as a sharp, experienced, well-spoken, non-polarizing person.

So when the Obama administration forces your kids to read The Communist Manifesto in NAMBLA class at their Madrassa, remember to blame Tina Fey.

I'll have to take Baldwin's word for it that Palin is the hotter of the two. Then again, I don't think Larry Flynt ever made a porno about Tina Fey.

Later in the show, Sarah Palin refuses to work and let's the 9 month pregnant Amy Poehler fill in for her.

Oh, and just so there's no confusion, SNL head writer Seth Meyers was laughing at Palin, not with her.

Sarah Palin discussed her upcoming "Saturday Night Live" appearance on Friday, telling Neal Boortz in a radio interview that she does not know what the late-night sketch comedy show has lined up for her while adding that it is a chance to "rise above the political shots that we take."

"I haven't seen a script — not at all. They haven't even hinted about what that script is going to say," said Palin.

"But you know," she said, "I just want to be there to show Americans that we will rise above the political shots that we take because we're in this serious business for serious challenges that are facing the good American people right now. That's why we're campaigning hard. That's why we're working hard."

Asked if she is going to play Tina Fey, the actress who has been skewering the Alaska governor's debate performances and television interviews, Palin said, "I should. That's a good idea."

She then added: "Oh, I don't know what they have lined up."

Hopefully they'll just let her improvise, on account of she's so doggone good at that and it'll work to shore up the laughs and help her performance with the laughs by shorin' everything up and in addition to health care and laughs, of course comedy also too.

Did you think that was funny? Well you're wrong, because according to Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Queen Latifah are both going to Hell.

After her totally woman-hatingly, sexist portrayal of super not-make-fun-of-worthy Alaska Governor Sarah Palin two weeks ago, Tina Fey returns to the scene of the hate crime…

Pyew, pyew, pyew!

How do you think this unbiased Fox News interview went?

Questions like "What are your plans to deal with Ayman al-Zawahiri?" and "How can the United States most responsibly protect the people of Iraq, while also balancing our own national security?"

No, I'm kidding, He asked things more like "Do you think America is more outrageously awesome or awesomely outrageous?" and "Did you watch Tina Fey on 'Saturday Night Live'?"

And her answer was as pitch-perfect as you'd expect…

HANNITY: Did you watch Tina Fey on "Saturday Night Live"?

PALIN: I watched with the volume all the way down and I thought it was hilarious, she was spot on.

HANNITY: Do you think you could play her one day?

PALIN: Oh absolutely. It was hilarious. Again, I didn't hear a word she said, but the visual was spot on.

What?

I mean… What?

Okay, so, maybe they've never heard of Tina Fey up in Alaska. Because, as far as I could tell, Tina Fey looked like Tina Fey. Sure, Tina Fey also looks like Sarah Palin, but, unless you didn't know that, you wouldn't think just looking at her standing on stage "with the volume all the way down" would be "hilarious."

So, she doesn't know who Tina Fey is, right?

HANNITY: Has anyone ever said that before? There's a similarity…

PALIN: They've been saying that for years up in Alaska. In fact, I dressed up as Tina Fey once for Halloween. We've been doing that before Tina Fey's being doing that.

How the shit is Sarah Palin gonna dress up as Tina Fey for Halloween? Doesn't she dress up as Tina Fey every morning when she wakes up and puts her Tina Fey-looking glasses on her Tina Fey-looking face?

Oh, wait a minute. This gives me an idea!

I'm gonna dress up as Dennis DiClaudio for Halloween.

That guy's hilarious-looking!

(via Andrew Sullivan)

"Well, I think that she looked a bit like her. I think that, of course, the portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial.

"I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes, I would say, sexist in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance. She has a lot of substance."

Yeah, that's an excellent point Fiorina makes. I would have expected more from Saturday Night Live than a caricatured and less-than-flattering portrayal of an American politician. What is comedy television coming to?

But, you know, really, what more could we have expected from a rabid male-chauvinist like Tina Fey? It just burns me up! A guy like her will never understand what it's like to be a highly successful, intelligent and substantive woman working in a field widely dominated by adolescently-minded men.

Why can't she be more of a gentleman like that nice ol' John McCain?

However, I Googled "flirg," and haven't found a satisfactory answer.

If you have a better definition than this one, add it to the Political Addictionary entry for Flirg.