Tina Fey Calls Nuns the 'B-word' on 'Saturday Night Live'

February 24th, 2008 5:41 PM

Just weeks after MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended for suggesting the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea, a comedienne on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" called nuns "b****es."

Tina Fey, the star of NBC's "30 Rock," came back to her television launching pad last evening to make a strong appeal to women around the country to vote for Hillary Clinton in upcoming primaries.

As part of her stump speech, Fey said the following (readers are warned about mild vulgarity as well as sacrilege):

And maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. And let me say something about that: yeah, she is, and so am I. And so is this one (pointing at Amy Poehler). And you know what, bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams, and they sleep on cots and are allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year, you hated those bitches, but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I’m saying it’s not too late Texas and Ohio. Get on board. Bitch is the new black!

As NBC and MSNBC are owned by the same parent company, General Electric, one has to wonder about the odd double standard at play here, irrespective of the fact that "SNL" is a late-night comedy show.

If making potentially derogatory comments about a former first daughter is unacceptable, shouldn't it be similary so for high-ranking religious figures?

Moving foward, in a bizarre twist on feminism, Fey began her Clinton appeal by accusing women that support rival Barack Obama of being too stupid to make important decisions without the help of daytime television superstar Oprah Winfrey:

And finally, in probably the most important women's news item there is, we have our first serious, female presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton. And yet, women have come so far as feminists that they don't feel obligated to vote for a candidate just because she's a woman. Women today feel perfectly free to make whatever choice Oprah tells them to.

That should work real well with feminists. After all, there's nothing more empowering to a woman than being told she's not intelligent enough to make up her own mind.

Yet, Fey clearly wasn't on stage just to offend Catholics along with women who dare not vote for Hillary:

Rush Limbaugh, the Jeff Conaway of right-wing radio, said that he doesn’t think America is ready to watch their president “turn into an old lady in front of them.” Really? They didn’t seem to mind when Ronald Reagan did that?

Interesting stump style, wouldn't you agree? After all, condescendingly brow-beating the citizenry into voting a certain way doesn't seem to be working this election cycle.

Just ask Hillary.

*****Update: Some may notice that the headline and lede for this piece changed. After reading through the original version a couple of times, and watching the video, I realized that for all intents and purposes, the same company that recently suspended Shuster was guilty of gross sacrilege towards the Catholic church and its members. As this seemed to be far more important than the Oprah remark, I changed things around.

*****Update II: For those thinking that referring to Fey's Clinton appeal as a stump speech was a misinterpretation of a comedy skit, the Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar saw last night's festivities as being "about as close as SNL could come to a live, on-air endorsement of Hillary Clinton" that "Bill Clinton probably couldn't have done [more] effectively."