In which Alyssa Rosenberg refutes a monumentally poor NYTimes story:

First, if anything, 30 Rock‘s vastly more tied to the news cycle and the pop culture than Parks and Recreation is. And The Office is on its second cycle of the same story: that’s the defined inverse of risky. In both cases, Parks and Recreation‘s relentless optimism and commitment to making an argument about the value of public service are so square, so different from either the irony-saturation or the manufactured, bland cheeriness of most other fare on television that the show’s themes and tone have come out the other side and are cool again.

But more to the point, just because something’s meme-ifiable doesn’t mean it’s stupid. Juxtaposition humor is really hard: something like the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness has to come from a place of both deep character development and great writing. The sight of a very butch man in a tiny hat and veil, the kind of dance GIF this piece refers to, could easily get reduced to a bad drag joke, but in the Parks’ writers hands and on the capable head of Nick Offerman, it’s something far weirder and more delightful.