He's got something: In this clip, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) has one of her many confrontations with her boyfriend Dennis (Dean Winters) -- the guy she can't seem to stay away from.

One of the interesting entertainment discussion points of the week has been a Slate piece by Jonah Weiner, arguing that 30 Rock has a "weird conservative streak" (to quote the subhead).

Weiner argues that 30 Rock often shows the liberal politics of Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) to be less effective or less realistic than the conservative politics of her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin). He says: "Liz's would-be adolescent paradise—and, with it, her liberal-feminist instincts—is ultimately cast as a neurosis she needs to escape, lest she die alone and unloved in her apartment, choking on a sandwich."

The problem with this thesis is that the show isn't about politics, either liberal or conservative. If it has a theme — and it's hazardous to insist that a show like this actually does, when its top priority is so clearly to get laughs — that theme is temptation, and whatever it says about politics circles right back to the things that tempt Liz to do things that, for whatever reason, she knows she shouldn't.

What makes 30 Rock tick and what doesn't, after the jump...

 

Liz is not a secure person (to say the least), and for that reason, she is very, very easily swayed. And what sways her the most is that everyone around her seems to have, for various reasons, a much easier life than she does. Jack has it easy because he's mercilessly powerful, Jenna has it easy because she's shameless, and Tracy has it easy because he's crazy.

And all of them have it easy because they don't question themselves or anything they do, which is what she does all the time.

The basic structure of many of 30 Rock's best stories goes something like this: Liz is presented with a temptation; she either resists or gives in. If she resists, she winds up gutting it out and wondering whether she should have just caved. If she gives in, she may or may not get what she wanted, but even if she does, she's so wrecked by guilt that she can't enjoy it and will probably ruin it.

In recent episodes, Liz has been tempted to hoodwink a pregnant teenager into letting Liz adopt her baby; to believe she's being tutored by Oprah Winfrey; and to live "in the bubble" with a gorgeous but dumb guy (Jon Hamm) who — and here we are with this again — has a much easier life than she does because he coasts along on free, looks-based approval without a care.

As for the business about choking on the sandwich, it was part of the first-season episode "Blind Date," in which Jack set Liz up with a friend of his who turned out to be a woman. Liz was, at that time, so sick of dating unsuccessfully and feeling like she was going to wind up alone that she clearly wondered whether she could substitute a relationship with a woman she at least liked.

The point of the sandwich-choking panic wasn't that Liz is actually at risk of choking on a sandwich and dying alone. It's that the fear of that fate makes her consider making choices that are obviously doomed to fail. The show isn't validating her fear; it's just recognizing that she has it.

Without the setting up of that fear, it wouldn't make sense that she's been repeatedly pulled back to boomerang boyfriend and beeper salesman Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters). Dennis pulls her in the opposite direction from Jack: Jack tempts her to become ruthless and powerful; Dennis tempts her to just give up already and accept an occasional cheeseburger as a substitute for real companionship.

Some of the other characters also get great mileage from temptation stories: Jack was not only tempted to sacrifice the things that pass for his principles during his relationship with C.C., but he was also tempted to become as even more ruthless as Devon Banks (Will Arnett), who was, in a way, Jack Donaghy's very own Jack Donaghy: someone who seemed to be able to outmaneuver him by going lower than he would.

And even Liz's pal Pete Hornberger (the sadly underused Scott Adsit) flirted with the possibility of great power when he put on a hairpiece.

So it's not about what's better and what's worse; it's about what looks good from wherever you happen to be standing at the time. Jack's icy exercise of total authority, which Weiner suggests is presented sympathetically, is actually drawn neither sympathetically nor unsympathetically. In the end, it simply is. If you don't explain that people who will do anything to get what they want are sometimes good at getting what they want, you're underselling how frustrating they are.

Yes, there are liberal stereotypes presented for skewering, like Carrie Fisher as the throwback writer who inspired Jack to tell Liz, "Never go with a hippie to a second location." (Maybe one of the funniest lines in the show's history, which is pretty packed with funny lines.) But so are conservative stereotypes, including just about everyone who showed up during Jack's stint in Washington at the end of Season 2 and beginning of Season 3.

Liz's life is not presented as a liberal feminist paradise she needs to escape. It is presented as a life that feels much harder and more complicated than the one she would have if she were more like Jack. Or Jenna. Or Tracy. Or, certainly, Kenneth.

Jack's way of doing things is not endorsed over Liz's, any more than Jenna's willingness to humiliate herself at any expense is endorsed over Liz's squeamishness at such things. It's just that Jack's unflinching capitalism seems easy, just like Jenna's unflinching shamelessness seems easy, because flinching is uncomfortable, and Liz is all about flinching.

It's that tension — where she's constantly saying to herself, "Oh, FINE, maybe I'll just do THAT" — that makes the show so relatable and funny. But it's not really about how anybody votes.