Well, What Did You Expect?

As soon as I saw a promo for ABC's new Hillary Clinton fantasy Commander in Chief, I said to myself...well, I didn't even have to say anything to myself. It was so obviously a Hillary Clinton fantasy - what its makers obviously consider to be a preview of things to come in the real world - that I just chuckled, shook my head for a bit, and went about my business.

Understand that the only thing I learned was the premise - a female vice president succeeds to the presidency upon the death of the president - and that Geena Davis was playing the lead role. I felt no need to research it, much less actually watch it when it aired. I knew what it was going to be instinctively.

Guess it's a good thing I'm not compelled to go to the trouble; otherwise I might have to expound extraneously like Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum:

Some may celebrate Commander in Chief for casting a woman as president, an office a woman has yet to hold. The problem is that Commander perpetuates more myths than it debunks. Most notably, it preaches that Americans — especially those inscrutable red-state types — are hostile to women in power. All evidence points in the opposite direction. Each year, female pioneers in industry and politics are greeted with popular applause. A 2003 Gallup poll found that nearly 9 in 10 Americans are open to the idea of voting for a woman for president. It’s quite possible that this figure understates the level of support since many of those who answered “no” probably were thinking specifically of one presumed female candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Well, duh. The myths abound. Such as a "sexist pig" GOP president. Or the depiction of a Republican "gender gap" among women that has always been overblown when it existed at all (but the Democrat gap amongst men sure as hell does, and we never hear about THAT one). Or a "sexist pig" GOP House Speaker (named "Templeton," doubtless after the rat in Charlotte's Web). Or pretty much all Republicans on the show being "sexist pigs." Or the sexist pig GOP president even putting "McKenzie Allen" on his ticket to begin with. Or that dodge fooling the voters if his sexism is that overt. Or his believing that while on his death bed he can order her to resign. Or that he thinks she actually will. (Sheesh, in the real world at that point Allen would already be acting president because of this evident mental irregularity, doubtless the product of his "debilitating aneurysm".) Or that a Templeton presidency would bring back "...book burning, creationism in the classroom, invading every third world country." Or that the Speaker would be so petty and juvenile as to sabotage Allen's teleprompter during a congressional address.

Commander in Chief is the incredulous answer to the question, "Is it possible for Hollywood to come up with a TV show that makes West Wing look intelligent?" You wanna know how bad it gets? Forget the laughably tiresome anti-conservative stereotypes - try this. At one point (so I have since read), Speaker Templeton refers to a Nigerian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery as “a woman who couldn’t keep her legs together.” This is meant as a misogynistic slam at President Allen, you understand. So how does she react? By threatening to invade Nigeria unless that adulterous woman is freed. And last time I looked, Nigeria was a third world country. Wonder what Allen's paranoid, hysterical left-wing staffers thought about that.

Well, actually, I don't - they were all for it, I'm sure. Such people plumb the depths of hypocrisy so pervasively that they've long since grown ethical gills.

If there's an irony in this show, it is that it presumes that a woman can't get elected president in her own right, but has to ride to power on the shoulders of a man. Kind of like Hillary Clinton did the first time around. And the double irony is that I, one of the "sexist pig Republicans" who never makes it on-screen, believe that Hillary Clinton will be elected president in 2008 (why and how are the purview of another post, and there'll be plenty of them soon enough).

But the country and capital President Rodham encounters in January 2009 won't look anything like the one Geena Davis finds. In the real world, "sexist pig" Republicans will be elbowing each other out of the way to become her towel boys and palm-frond wavers, for fear of being sent to the Alaska gulag on charges of, well, sexism.

All the same, if I were on watch in Abuja long about then, I'd have my military on full alert, just in case.