Social media is blowing up about Tina Fey’s appearance on Weekend Update Summer Edition, accusing her of white privilege and insensitivity, and all that blame misses several points.

Tina Fey’s piece is brilliant and brave and aimed right at Nazis and apologists and weak political leaders and absurdly dangerous true factsabout American society today.

She delivers smart, lacerating political commentary, biting visual social satire, and caring, protective advice for exactly the people who are complaining about her work in this piece.

I wish these critics would read this post and then watch the clip again (I will include it below).

I believe many miss Tina Fey’s points (I rewatched the clip and get more out of it each time) because they are doing what too many of us do these days, that is to say too many of us “consume with agenda” – we watch with our minds made up as to what we expect to see.

 With respect to everyone’s right to an opinion, I think this piece does merit a closer look because 1) people are blowing it up on social media and 2) it actually is profound.

Tina Fey is not talking from white privilege but from home turf; she went to UoV, and it is clear from her comments that she is pissed Nazis invaded her alma mater and hurt people who have a shared experience of Charlottesville that she identifies with as well.

Plus, she’s “seen Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “wasn’t confused”. This is a great line about how easy it should be to know and identify this evil.

And the smart lines continue, targeting an impressive array of guilty parties while she works to do other things that are profound and worthy of our admiration:

1) she is using humor to urge people to stay out of harm’s way;

2) she’s making the argument that we cannot reason with white supremacists;

3) she is pointing out that these isolated Nazis desperately want attention;

4) she’s arguing that the strongest move against them is to not give them the attention they want (if a Klan rally is held as a show of force and no one but the Klan comes to witness it, where’s the show of force?);

5) she is educating her audience about the absurd amount of self-trained, heavily armed militias in this country;

6) she is also using visual humor to comment on how much pain we’ve been in (especially women) since the election;

7) when Che joins in he is smartly echoing that demonstration of pain;

8) the cake is self-medication, and America does it in so many forms;

9) she is declaring her love for Charlottesville, her alma mater, and people opposing Nazis and 

10) again urging them not to give in to the hate.

She is not saying “don’t demonstrate” just “don’t provide the Nazis a platform to get attention”. Make your own positive statements rather than feeding into their hate.

Damn impressive in my humble opinion.

And worth thinking about before we condemn this slice of progressive brilliance.

Bravo, Tina Fey. Bravo.