On one side were those who insisted that Fey’s satire was brilliant, and that those who disliked it had missed the joke. You see, according to this narrative, Fey was playing a character: She was mocking herself and other white liberal women who turn to stress eating when situations are overwhelming. Her encouragement for people to stay away was meant to be ironic, part of the overall act. Her literal eating of cake was meant to invoke Marie Antoinette’s famous (and misattributed) “Let them eat cake” line, as a nod to the way in which she’s often criticized for being an elitist, overeducated, coastal liberal.
On the other side were those who felt that Fey’s comedy was a cheap cop-out. It was presented as a Saturday Night Live segment, even though SNL is on summer break and even though Fey herself is not a regular cast member. In this perspective, Fey is exactly what her apologists claim she’s mocking: A tone-deaf, protected white woman insinuating herself into a significant cultural conversation at the expense of the truly oppressed and endangered in order to say little of value, while casually tossing out jokes about rape and racial boogeymen.
I could write some of this off as cognitive dissonance on the part of supporters: They recognize that lines were overstepped, but their love for Maher and Fey is resolved by pretending that the overstep was part of some greater humor that outsiders just don’t understand. I don’t think that is what’s going on here, though. I think it has more to do with the nature of comedy than with cognitive dissonance.
When Ice Cube says he’d long figured that Maher would overstep the line at some point, Maher gets defensive and self-righteous. Cube struggles to provide a specific example of what he’d meant, so Maher dismisses his position. One reason Cube struggles, I think, is because Maher’s skirting of the edge of racism isn’t anything specific, it’s a general spirit based on who he is and what he does with his platform.
