30 Rock addresses Tracy Morgan's homophobic rant

Because there was really no way they couldn't, last night's episode of 30 Rock took on Tracy Morgan's infamous anti-gay rant from this past summer, putting his character, Tracy Jordan, under fire for a similar (if far less horrible and violent) homophobic outburst.

After Liz Lemon arrives at her offices to a crowd of chanting protesters, she finds out that Tracy has offended the gay community during a stand-up act, saying, "Being gay is stupid. If you want to see a penis, take off your pants! If I got turned into a gay, I'd sit around all day looking at my own junk." Naturally, Liz explains to him why exactly this wasn't a good thing to do.

On the one hand, it's good that the show dealt with the incident, and forced Morgan to act out an episode essentially making fun of his own idiocy. On the other, even though we wouldn't want them to, there's no way the show could safely re-create an incident as genuinely upsetting as Morgan's real-life tirade, leaving their parody/apology of it feeling a little bit perfunctory.

Check out a clip of the episode above, and judge for yourselves.