Is everyone ready for the great Leap Day festivities?

"Poke your eyes, pull your hair, you forgot what clothes to wear." Liz gets the situationally mandated eye poke for failing to wear the Leap Day-appropriate yellow-and-blue from -- of all, er, people -- Lutz. Jack Donaghy will register astonishment that "the woman who watches all six pawn-shop reality shows" has never seen the classic film Leap Dave Williams, making her apparently the only American suffering such cultural deprivation. Watch the instant-classic "Leap Day" episode of 30 Rock here.

"Leap Day's not a thing."

-- Liz Lemon, in the "Leap Day" episode of 30 Rock

"We should live every day as if it's Leap Day, and every Leap Day as if it's your last."

-- at episode's end, the real Leap Day William?

by Ken

Politics is one of the uncommon fields in which it's not necessarily a godsend for an incoming officeholder to replace what we would call "an easy act to follow." Look how Barack Obama botched the sweet deal of taking the reins from Chimpy the Ex-Prez. Now there would have been a heap of perilous passage to maneuver based just on the interlocking network of cosmically fine messes the Bush regime psychos and thugs go us into, but it didn't help that the new president often seemed to forget that he wasn't the old one.

In other fields the transition should be easy as pie. Replacing Nancy Franklin as TV critic of The New Yorker, for example. This would have been a cushy gig for anyone from Rose the Talking Parrot to that plucky squirrel you watched climb a tree last weekend in the park. I'm still trying to get a fix on Emily, whose writing at New York magazine I'm unfamiliar with, but there's no question that it's an upgrade. How could it not be? (For the record, I see that New Yorker Editor David Remnick told WWD Media in September, "Nancy decided she was tired of writing for a while, and tired of writing about TV I expect, after she catches her breath, she'll begin writing for us again and I dearly hope so." I'll take the high road and refrain from obvious sarcastic comment, but don't let me stop you.)

I bring this up because just as I've been thinking about the amazing stride 30 Rock has maintained in its belatedly begun new season, I stumbled across a February 23 newyorker.com blogpost of Emily's {"In Defense of Liz Lemon"), in which I learned:

Judging from my Twitter feed, there's been a backlash to "30 Rock" this season, particularly the character of Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey. Here's one example of these anti-Lemon blog posts. [You'll find this link and the following ones onsite. I didn't read them, but you may want to. -- Ed.] Here's another. Here's another. The argument in all these pieces (many by writers I respect) is pretty much the same: "30 Rock" used to be funny, but now it's sour and negative. Liz Lemon was once our heroine -- a sassy, confident, if somewhat neurotic single career lady. Now she's become infantilized and dumb. She behaves as if Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is her daddy. She doesn't trust her own judgment, she's bad at her job, and there's something awfully misogynist about all this! Liz Lemon is pathetic.

At the outset I had to override my instinctive prejudice against anyone who judges anything by anybody's Twitter feed. Emily went on to write:

Well, I can't get on board the hate train, especially after last week's tour-de-force episode, in which Liz morphed from a crazy old subway lady (every New Yorker's dream: she gets her way at every turn) into Heath Ledger's Joker. Someone needs to speak up for the Lemon, and for the Fey. Because from the beginning Liz Lemon was pathetic. That was what was enthralling, and even revolutionary, about the character. Unlike some other adorkable or slutty-fabulous characters I could name, Liz only superficially resembled the protagonist of a romantic comedy, ready to remove her glasses and be loved. Beneath that, she was something way more interesting: a strange, specific, workaholic, NPR-worshipping, white-guilt-infected, sardonic, curmudgeonly, hyper-nerdy New Yorker. In the first episode, Jack nails her on sight as "a New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, over-scheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for … a week." Even Liz had to admit he scored a point.

That was why the show worked: it rarely made Liz an empowering role model, although many women certainly identified with her. The show let her be the George Costanza, not the Mary Richards. And, refreshingly, this appeal had little to do with sex or relationships: a lot of it was about her job. Liz was professionally successful, but she was a sellout. . . .

I mostly kind of skimmed the piece, and there's a lot about women's roles on TV that I wouldn't be allowed to comment on in any event, since you can't unless you're a woman, but since I do frequently watch 30 Rock reruns from earlier seasons, I don't think there's any question that Emily has a better grasp of how the character of Liz Lemon began and subsequently evolved than the Twitterers she's taking issue with. For example, later she writes, "That has always been one of the most radical things about “30 Rock,” the way it has continually punctured Liz’s image of herself as a spunky brunette underdog." And later:

And the thing is, Liz’s confrontations with her worst qualities have actually strengthened her. That’s what so odd about the backlash. This season, Liz is happier than ever—and for once, she’s rejecting Jack’s influence, finding her own bliss, embracing her oddball nature, going on the Oprah-style vacations she feels like taking.

I'm not sure that Tina Fey would express quite such a pluckily cheery view of where and how Liz has wound up. She seems to be enjoying piling on poor Liz, perhaps relishing the ways in which her fictional alter-ego has stumbled down her Road Not Taken. But the Nussbaum piece is still worth a skim.

AS FOR THE SUBLIME "LEAP DAY" EPISODE . . .

Kenneth the decommissioned NBC page does his much-admired rendering of Leap Day William. We'll find out that apparently he's not, as we (like Jack) would assume, wearing a bald cap.

There isn't much I can say that wouldn't detract from rather than add to the pleasures. It's true that Leap Day has been featured all over the TV dial -- or rather the cable and satellite program guide, but nobody nailed it the way the 30 Rock people did, making Liz Lemon the only noncelebrant in a world gone quadrennially Leap Day-mad. These days the show's writing is so thorough, intricate, and dazzling, and the characters are so ingrained in the writers' consciousness, that there really doesn't appear to be any separation between writing and acting.

Sure, the celebrity cameo roles can become gimmicky, and this episode was studded with them, but they're usually well done, and I thought one of them from this episode, the very last, with John Cullum at his most ineffably charming, dressed as -- what else? -- Leap Day William, who then reappears after the final commercial break as -- dare we imagine? -- the real Leap Day William:

"Well, I guess we all learned something tonight, about love, friendship, about taking chances, about the true meaning of Leap Day. But these lessons aren't just good for every four years. No-o-o! They're good every year, because we should live every day as if it's Leap Day, and every Leap Day as if it's your last. Oh, and if you should ever see an old man in a blue suit bustin' out of the middle of the ocean, take the time to say, "Howdy." It might just be [takes off his hat] worth your while [opens his mouth and reveals a mouthful of short but fanglike teeth.]"

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Jindal Won't Do Much For The GOP But His Shockingly Inept Speech Has Made A Star Out Of Kenneth The Page

Do you see a president hiding here?

Yesterday our Ken, who, unlike me, watches TV and knows about popular shows like 30 Rock and has opinions on characters like Kenneth the Page, was mortified that people were comparing the page to Jindal. (I'm friends with Stephen Page of Barenaked Ladies-- but I had never heard of Kenneth the Page until Gov. Jindal did his dumbed down impersonation of him after Obama's speech Tuesday night.) This morning I was reading both the NY Times' critique of Jindal's Mr. Rogersish speech and the L.A. Times' report on how mortified the Republican Party was over Jindal's atrocious performance:

The reviews were swift and scathing: Off-putting. Amateurish. Disastrous.

And those were fellow Republicans reacting to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who delivered the nationally broadcast follow-up to President Obama's speech to Congress on Tuesday night. (Not surprisingly, Democrats echoed the criticism.)

...Fellow conservatives criticized Jindal's mannerisms, his sing-song delivery, the backdrop for his 10-minute speech (a spiral staircase in the governor's mansion in Baton Rouge).

"You can't go on TV and counter Obama with that," said radio host Laura Ingraham.

Philip Klein of the American Spectator said Jindal seemed more like a high school student delivering his valedictory speech than a prospective new GOP leader.

Aside from Tom DeLay (still not in prison), Rush Limbaugh, who is apparently back to mainlining Oxycontin, was Jindal's one defender. Threatening other wingnuts who criticized the GOP's one hope to make sure Sarah Palin isn't their party's future, Limbaugh babbled incoherently on Wednesday morning on his Hate Talk Radio program, "I love Bobby Jindal, and that did not change after last night... Because if you think — people on our side I’m talking to you — those of you who think Jindal was horrible, you think — in fact, I don’t ever want to hear from you ever again. … I’ve spoken to him numerous times, he’s brilliant. He’s the real deal." Other wingers, including South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Republican Party spokesperson Amanda Carpenter, are questioning Limbaugh's sanity. Now does anyone care about any of this or what any of these people have to say? Well... viewers of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon-- another TV thing I had never heard about until today-- were treated to Kenneth the Page, or at least Jack McBrayer, the actor who plays him. Take a look at how he responded to Jindal's unauthorized impersonation and career suicide:

I can't believe Goobernor Booby's performance either, but the thing I want to say is that he's not our Kenneth from 30 Rock

A taste of everyone's favorite NBC page, including such gems as: "I was pretty addicted to coke back in my Wall Street days" and, stretcher-bound, "If I die, will you take care of my birds?" Our Kenneth is not the Goobernator, uh-uh, no way.

by Ken

Really, we should be talking about the president's speech today, not the stupefying spectacle that followed it.

Now, I make it a policy, or thought I did, not to watch presidential speeches. I mean, really, what do you learn? But I watched last night's, and wow! Talk about a guy showing real understanding of the fix we've gotten ourselves into -- not least that it goes way beyond the housing debacle -- with real determination and vision, not just for getting us out of this fix, but for using it as an opportunity to seriously change the course we're on for a better future.

That was some kind of speech.

Actually, though, I'm not sure there's much more to say about it right now. It all depends on the follow-through. If the speech turns out to be the starting point for the kind of re-creation of our economy and society it envisioned, it may go down as one of the great, seminal speeches in the country's history. If not, well, it will be (barely) remembered as just another spell of gum-flapping.

We need to see the details unfold. I'm not complaining about the amount of detail included, which seemed to quite right for a State of the Union-equivalent speech, where the purpose is to set forth the president's goals and try to rally support for them. In this regard, the president offered plenty of detail -- I'd say a breathtaking amount. If he can now back that up with concrete programs intelligently designed to bring us closer to the vision, I think he did a splendid job of rallying political support.

If the president can maintain this level of commitment and inspiration, I think he's going to have so much of the country behind him (there will, apparently, always be that other 30 percent) that the Republican pols are going to face the choice of working with him or becoming simply irrelevant politically, their only available game plan being the one they're using in Congress now to sit on the sidelines whining, hoping and praying that it all fails and they get to come in and pick up the pieces. This is, I think, a wildly risky strategy, and one that many Americans will have great trouble either accepting or forgetting.

Meanwhile, there's the grotesque spectacle poor Bobby Jindal made of himself, and while I hate to pile on, and think it may be all the more redundant considering that the goobernor may just have ended his political career outside Louisiana, it's kind of hard not to talk about that one of the saddest, lamest performances I've seen in my decades of watching American political theater.

But the thing that moves me to write is the evocations I'm hearing of 30 Rock's beloved super-weird super-page Kenneth. As I've written, not only love do I 30 Rock, but I especially love Kenneth (Jack McBrayer), as I suspect all viewers of the show do. As I wrote, he and Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy have been one of the elements of the show that always worked, back to the pilot episode, even while the other elements needed (how shall I say?) "seasoning."

But Kenneth is not Bobby Jindal. Kenneth is very weird, yes. Hardly an episode goes by when we don't find out that the depths of his weirdness lie even deeper than we thought. But Kenneth is not Bobby Jindal. Everybody loves Kenneth. Bobby Jindal, as far as I can tell from my mercifully limited explosure, and certainly off last night's fiasco, is just a creep. I mean, anyone who could start such a speech with that creepy telling of his life story, which ought to have some inspirational value, and instead make it sound utterly pointless, cheesy, embarrassing, and, yes, kind of creepy comes off as, you know, a creep.

Viewers may love Kenneth, but it would never occur to us to have him hold public office. Being an NBC page -- this is Kenneth's life work, and he's doing it, living his dream! Now, if Goobernor Booby has any interest in joining the NBC page program, I'll bet Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels know people they could talk to.

Normally I would never use the phrase "allowing for the right-wing spin" with Michael Gerson, since normally with MG if you take away the right-wing spin there's nothing left. But while I doubt that any of us would be much taken with the Bobby J he's touting in his Washington Post column today -- printed, alas, a day too late for our Michael's credibility -- this is apparently what his admirers see, or saw, in him. Is it necessary to say that none of this was on view last night, unless you count the unbearably mawkish litany of his personal background with which he opened, a subject that he's supposed to prefer to downplay! (Does he perhaps like to downplay it the way Young Johnny McCranky just hated talking about his POW experience, which he nevertheless seemed to do at every opportunity?)

All I can think is that someone (it can't possibly have been the governor's own idea) decided that the country would love him if he could just give them the old Sarah Palin dumbth. (That's a Steve Allen word, "dumbth." He thought there needed to be a word for, well, dumbth. You know, the way that something that's warm has the quality of warmth.) And it's really only a second consideration that only Sarah Palin can do Sarah Palin dumbth. The first consideration about Sarah Palin, always, is that zowie, she's hot! She shows up, and all those limp-dicked,beer-bellied limp-dicked Republican guys get a groin tingle, thinking, "Wow! 40-whatever, five kids, and still -- wow! man, could I make music on those bazongas!"

Is there anyone out there who wants to make anything with Goobernor Booby's bazongas?

The interesting thing is that, assuming Gerson is right about whatever appeal Booby is supposed to have for people for whom he has appeal, last night he did a 180 and -- I think -- destroyed his political career. More than anything now I'll be curious to learn the dirt, I mean the back story of that speech. Who exactly was involved in the strategizing and the implementation? Did somebody make Booby do it? Or did he really think it was a good idea?

I just couldn't believe that the clown had nothing of substance to say except, eventually, a few bromides. ("Tax cuts!") I mean, he -- and whoever -- must have been provided in advance with at least some form of the president's speech, and of course then they had the opportunity to watch it. Did it really not occur to any of them that the response they apparently had in mind had been rendered irrelevant? A speech this filled with determination and vision, this skillfully executed, would have been tough to respond to under the best circumstances, but who thought it would be smart to counter with a guy who's clearly not a dope in real life but chose, or was chosen, to play a village idiot on TV?

Of course, on the whole I'm grateful for the ineptitude of the production. In the old days, Karl Rove would have had his crack team of obfuscators and spinners lying in wait, armed with all their focus-tested buzzwords for an orgy of obfuscation and a breathless round of spin-the-media. This, this was simply hopeless. It's hard to believe that anyone with, say, a fourth-grade education could have been involved in writing that speech. And I believe if you'd plucked anybody off any high school Debate Club or Public Speaking Club in the country, he/she would have done a better job than Goobernor Booby did of making it sound like he was talking about something.

I'm sure Rush and Sean and Billo and the others will find a way to spin the two speeches, but I tell you, this time out, the kids are really going to have to work to earn their blood money.


KENNETH ON "THE PAGE WORLD" AND THE U.N.

I found this lovely deleted scene ("embedding disabled by request") between Kenneth and Jenna (Jane Krakowski), after he's demolished his page jacket and, since it was her fault (we actually saw this happen in the above compilation clip), she offers to buy him a new one, or at least talk to someone, and in horror at the prospect of her talking to that singularly august personage the head page, he warns her:

"The page world is a political rat's nest. It's sort of like the U.N. except we're still relevant in the modern world."

No, this isn't the deleted "U.N." scene. This is from the episode where Jenna got really fat, and TGS viewers loved it, so it became Kenneth's job to spoon-feed her to keep her fat in order to maintain those great show ratings. (He's playing "airplane hangar" with her here.)

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