September 29, 2005, - 7:15 am
Commanderatrix in Chief: “Desperate Housewives” Pick a Prez
By
Everything is wrong with ABC’s new show, “Commander in Chief.”
It’s not just that the show about the first female President is a weekly hour-long campaign commercial for Hillary Clinton. It’s not just that conservatives are mean and evil on this propaganda hour.
It’s that this is what a female President will be like as brought to you by Oprah and the women of “Desperate Housewives”–and the legions of female fans who love them. Do you want them picking the leader of the free world?
I don’t.
Here’s why. Every presidential election year, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center conducts 26 polls. Each time, the school finds that women didn’t quite know what was going on. Men, on the other hand, were more likely, during the preceding day, to have thought about the elections, talked about it, and read or heard about it on the news.
The University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center does a similar set of polls and studies each presidential election year, conducted by two women professors. The results of these studies are even more disturbing. Out of 25 questions on policy issues, women lag behind the men on most of them. In 2000, women lagged behind men in knowledge of all policy issues but one (on which they were equal).
The men knew more about the Presidential candidates’ positions on taxes, weapons treaties, gun control, and even “traditional women’s issues”–healthcare, education, and abortion.
Sorry, but I don’t want “Thelma and Louise,” Star Jones, and the women of “Desperate Housewives” picking my President. Keep them out of the ballot box and busy whining, crying, and obsessing over a broken nail and the handsome plumber next door, instead.
The women voters in these surveys bested the men on one issue: They knew what Oprah wore on the previous day’s episode. Just kidding. But it’s a safe bet.
So, when Oprah’s “O” Magazine (via Marie Wilson of anti-male Ms. Foundation’s White House Project) calls a show, “riveting”–as it did “Commander in Chief”–you have to question the agenda of the show, and the numbed minds who watch her show that also propelled “Commander in Chief” to the top ratings spot for its debut.
Then, there is the show, itself. Was it a weird coincidence that the very first scene features children singing “America the Beautiful–IN FRENCH? It gets worse from there: a joke about how if women were running the show instead of Moses, the Jews would have asked for directions, and been in Israel in a week, instead of wandering the desert for forty years.
No, they’d have spent forty years searching the tent closet for the outfit of the day and asking, “Does this make me look fat?”
Of course, an anti-female joke on the level of the Moses joke would never make it on the air–without Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and the whole gang of feminist hags bitching and clamoring for sensitivity training.
Then there are the evil Republicans. The Republican speaker of the House (played by Donald Sutherland) is described as “an S.O.B., a liar, and he cheats at poker.” His character is even more evil than that. The former personal secretary for the now-dead Republican President refuses to stay on with the female President, saying, “I’d feel cheap working for you.” Rude, mean, evil, gratuitously insulting. That’s the Republicans for you.
The actress playing the President, Geena Davis, wasn’t picked for the role by accident. Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and most other liberal women that have been mentioned in the role of President are hardly attractive–or even straight-looking. Davis was picked because she’s a former model and, unlike most women, she’s six feet tall. In heels, she’s taller than most of the male actors on the show. She looks commanding. By design. The women in real-life politics do not.
Davis, at age 48, had twin sons. Do you want a President who is busy nursing and raising twin boys? Someone would suffer–the American people.
And Davis’ politics are not far from your mind when watching the show. Geena Davis heads something called the “See Jane Foundation,” which promotes more female characters on television. What–there aren’t enough? From soap operas to “Desperate Housewives,” to “Oprah” to “America’s Next (Non)Top Model,” to “Sex & the City” syndicated re-runs, TV is dominated by women. The problem is that there aren’t enough men. And the men that are on TV (unless you count pro football) are incompetent, unemployed fools, absent dads, and loser criminals and drug users. Thanks, President Davis–having an estrogen fit–for not noticing.
Davis’ emasculated husband on the show is relegated to First Girlie Man–reminiscent of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s wimpy husband, Dan Granholm Mulhern, who–yes–took his wife’s last name. Sad. Very sad.
Davis tried out for the U.S. Olympic Archery Team–and failed miserably. And, like all women who fail miserably at something, she joined the militant feminist movement as an activist and spokeswoman. As an honoree and member of the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), she has been outspoken in favor of Title IX–the federal law that feminist men-haters succeeded in using to drum men out of college and high school sports.
Donna Lopiano, a Davis friend and the WSF chief whom I debated on FOX Sports’ “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” supports absurd ideas like women coaching men’s pro sports. Get the analogy?: A woman coaching the New England Patriots is like . . . a woman coaching the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Commander-in-Chief.
We saw what a woman coaching the men did on this absurd Presidential TV show. The female President–for her first act as Prez–has our soldiers invade Nigeria and rescue a woman sentenced to death for adultery. Reality check: George W. Bush was President when the real-life Nigerian woman was sentenced to death. But hormones and PMS didn’t cause him to lose all grip and send the troops in to rescue the woman. He used diplomatic pressure, and the woman was spared–not kidnapped to the States like President Geena Davis did.
Either way, neither the TV female Prez–or the current real thing–saved the day. Women continue to face and receive these death sentences in Islam-dominated Nigeria and all over the Islamic world. The disposition of this one woman didn’t change that.
And hopefully, this one TV show won’t change the real-life political landscape of the White House.
But not if Hillary Clinton and her friends in Hollywood have it their way.
Tags: ABC, activist and spokeswoman, actress, America, America's Next (Non)Top Model, Betty Friedan, chief, commander in chief, Dan Granholm Mulhern, Debbie Schlussel Everything, Desperate Housewives, Donald Sutherland, Donna Lopiano, federal law, football, Geena Davis, George W. Bush, Gloria Steinem, Governor, handsome plumber, Harvard's Shorenstein Center, healthcare, high school sports, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Jane Foundation, Jennifer Granholm, leader, Louise, Madeleine Albright, Marie Wilson, Michigan, Ms. Foundation, New England Patriots, Nigeria, Olympic, Oprah, President, pro sports, Republican President, Republican speaker, Secretary, Sex & the City, The University of Pennsylvania, Thelma, United States, University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center, White House, Women, Women's Sports Foundation
Like Tom Leykis says, “The show is going to flop and Clinton is an ugly hag”
KOAJaps on September 29, 2005 at 7:40 am