I didn't like it at first. It took three years before my daughter sat me down in front of her computer and showed me the light. Although she and I adore 30 Rock for very different reasons. She finds the characters delightfully wacky and funny.
I find Jack, such a corporate parody, so self-absorbed, so full of MBA management truisms, as the head of the microwave and entertainment divisions of NBC, the real dark humor of the show. Jack is the character constructed by Alec Baldwin, and in real life, Jack is sinister.
What amazes me is that NBC hasn't pulled the show.
It truly is subversive.
As we watch the functions of government get privatized through disasters, war, and fear--entire communities outside Atlanta, GA are now independent fiefdoms run by private companies, the same companies who brought us post-invasion Iraq and post-Hurricane Katrina, who profits?
According to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, "...General Electric, which owns NBC, purchased InVision, the major producer of controversial high-tech bomb detection devices used in airports and other public spaces. InVision received a staggering $15 billion in Homeland Security contracts between 2001 and 2006, more of such contracts than any other company."
That's Jack's microwave division, albeit more insidious. We aren't talking about a pocket size microwave, as featured on a show this season, but an entertainment company whose back end is all munitions, private security, and war. And we wonder why corporate media wasn't critical of Bush and Cheney before the invasion of Iraq?
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