I’m sure many of you have heard of ABC’s new show, Commander in Chief (they even have a fake blog going), staring Geena Davis as the president, which premieres tomorrow night. I don’t know what to make of this show yet. The commercials for it are pretty intriguing and kinda hits a nerve in regards to how would the country would respond to a female president. One of the phrases used in the commercials is “wife, mother, leader,” and I wonder how many times the marital and parental status, and concerns surrounding those things of a male president or world leader come up. And how many times would the media ask a male head of state, “can you balance your marriage, family life, and manage to fulfill your obligations as president/prime minister/chancellor? Will any of those spheres in your life suffer because of too much emphasis on another? Will you get moody one day and blow up another country?” Not that there isn’t any room for one to be concerned in how to balance a relationship, family, and a career, and keep their sanity all the while, but why is this question and concern still mostly posed to women? And why does there seem to be a hint that they’ll fail in balancing these things out? Oh well. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
**Also on a totally different subject, Cindy Sheehan was arrested today while protesting outside of the White House.
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We need a promo contest for a TV show featuring George Bush as a fictional president. How about:
“Drunk, father, fuckup.”
I am wondering how long it will be before he (Dumbya) claims he didn’t know anything about arresting Cindy?
Yeah…We will believe that about as much as the idea that he “takes responsibility” for the poor handling of Katrina!
Worst. President. Ever.
He doesn’t have to claim he didn’t know anything about arresting Cindy. The wingnuts will applaud him for it, and since he’s not looking for re-election, he doesn’t need to give a damn what anyone thinks besides his wingnut base and enough of Congress so the rest can’t vote to impeach him.
Dumb fuck of a president.
“Drunk, father, fuckup.”
*Laughs*
And how many times would the media ask a male head of state… “Will you get moody one day and blow up another country?”
Why would anyone need to ask that? For every male President since Johnson, everyone knows that the answer is “yes.”
Funny, I was wondering very similar things before the German elections, when Angela Merkel got some slur for not having children and thus being unable to understand most women (right, because all male politicians do understand most women?). Really, it’s always about the family, the marriage, the kids, blah-de-blah, but if said woman doesn’t have these, then she’s almost considered abnormal and “unable to understand”. These concerns sure do not show up nearly as often for male politicians (do they?). Perhaps this is because, well, women get the hard part of child bearing and giving birth, so they don’t have any other choice than being involved from the start, while a man can at least distanciate from it physically. I don’t know.
Regardless, everybody needs to balance their lives at some point, if only to learn how to live in family or even simply in couple after years of being alone; why the question is always asked to women and almost never to men remains somewhat of an infuriating point, as if it was implied that we’re unable to do it no matter how hard we try, and that everyone doubts we can manage it anyway.
You’d think a woman without children would be preferred, because then she’d be able to work a 168 hour week without having to worry about who was looking after the kids, the way men with nice compliant wives can manage. Unless it’s a question of “Women are unsuitable for high office… which argument shall we invoke against this particular woman?”
I’m going to try to watch this show — but it already has one mark against it: she wasn’t elected into the presidency. Someone had to die (?) in order for her to be “given” the presidency. Christ on a cracker.
QGrrl, not only did the President have to die so she could “get” to be President, according to the review I read yesterday, the President also tries to get her to resign when he knows he’s a goner, so that the guy he really wanted to be his running mate, who is currently House majority leader, will be his successor instead. She almost does it, too, which is so totally lame.
It kind of drives me a little nuts that a TV show about politics gets more popular attention than politics itself. A couple nights ago, I did a little experimental search of phrases on Google’s new blog search function, and here’s what I found:
congressional election 2006: 2,817 blog articles
I love doughnuts: 7,260 blog articles
new TV series: 88,723 blog articles
great new advertisement: 9,137 blog articles
really cute shoes: 61,156 blog articles
long nose hair: 66,943 blog articles
Geena Davis nice. Woman president, nice concept. Inattention to coming chance to replace the Republican Congress, mind-blowingly nuts.
As a man, I have to say that I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the balancing act between family, relationship, and career is posed mostly to women. I think that men don’t talk about it much, but it’s there for them too – at least the ones who give a damn.
Every day I struggle with balance, and so do a lot of the men that I work with. I’ve got crazy guilt for not spending enough time with the kids if I’m out making money, and crazy guilt for not making enough money if I’m spending time with the kids. Add in wife and friends, and I feel that every minute is a precious commodity… so I feel pretty guilty right now for taking the time to write this blog comment.
Damned in every direction!
That’s dramatically more interesting than having her be elected. A female president of a political system that isn’t yet willing to elect a woman president faces more conflict because of her sex than one who was elected would. (The same “someone had to die” strategy – three someones, actually – is used to bring about the first Black president in the film The Man, in which a Senator played by James Earl Jones becomes president).
It’s also probably realistic. I think that American voters might be willing to elect a female president, but I don’t think party bigwigs who determine who can realistically have a shot at being in a position to win the presidency are, at this point, willing to support women. (Although sometimes I have pipe dreams about a Rice vs. Clinton race, in which no matter who won at least that particular glass ceiling will have been chipped).
Probably CiC will suck, simply because most shows suck. But I don’t think the “death elects her” set-up is necessarily a bad decision.
Amp: Buffy the vampire slayer was quite popular and dramatic. If we can envision vampire slayers, we can evision (and dramatize) a female president.
Why could it be dramatic just because she’s the leader of the world’s strongest nation? Why does the drama have to center around her femaleness? … and thus her potential competency?
I wonder how many times the marital and parental status, and concerns surrounding those things of a male president or world leader come up.
Well, obviously people don’t ask men about their parenting skills.
But the marital status thing is pretty big — I think it will be quite as long before we have a single President as before we have one that doesn’t attend a religious institution, say. It has been discussed in primaries, and, heck, an entire movie (The American President?) was devoted to public speculation about the romantic possibilities of a sitting President and how they undermined his ability to do his job…
just to set the record straight.
As a man, I have to say that I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the balancing act between family, relationship, and career is posed mostly to women. I think that men don’t talk about it much, but it’s there for them too – at least the ones who give a damn.
I think you’re misreading the issue. It’s not whether men think about family issues, it’s whether those questions become part of the narrative of their political career, the subject of press questions and speculation, etc. And pretty much the answer to the latter is NOPE.
Why could it be dramatic just because she’s the leader of the world’s strongest nation? Why does the drama have to center around her femaleness? …
Because otherwise it’s just the West Wing only not nearly as good. what’s the thing that’s new here? the femaleness. that is, in fact, what the show is about (and because it doesn’t have to imagine a completely different/parallel/future evolved political system this way either).
I’m with Amp that it will probably suck, but that the Vice President-promoted thing is a reasonable starting place. Geraldine Ferraro, anyone?
Yeah, acm, why don’t we just keep our sights low, eh? I mean, it’s not like the US got bored with multiple shows about rapists, wife beaters, serial killers of women, abducted girls and what not. Whatever.
Actually, we have had two single presidents: James Buchanan (#15, right before Lincoln), who never married, and Grover Cleveland (#22) who was a bachelor when he was elected, although he married in June 1886, a year and a quarter into his first term (Grover Cleveland was also President #24, having been elected to two non-consecutive terms, but he was only a bachelor during his first term).
it’s all about greasing the skids for Hillary….which is too bad so many dems are just ceding the nomination to her.
there ARE other candidates out there.
too bad there aren’t any leaders,
and that includes Hillary…
…silent in the face of the war, rights erosion, bankruptcy laws,
on and on.
Q Grrl:
Hopefully, CiC is intended to be a more realistic show than Buffy was (disclaimer: Buffy is one of my favorite shows ever).
I don’t agree that any show that focuses on the issues brought up by being the first female president (among other things) has to be questioning her competency. It could also take the point of view that she is competent, and the problem is sexists around her who assume otherwise because she’s a woman.
There could also be a good show based around what you describe – although the truth is, it’s hard to find a TV writer as good as Aaron Sorkin. It takes a lot more skill to write a good West Wing episode than a good Law and Order, which is why there are countless L&O knockoffs and virtually no knockoff West Wings.
In the end, the concept behind the show is going to matter less than how well or poorly they develop the concept. The most feminist concept in the world could made into crap by a bad rendition; and a great rendition will rescue a so-so premise.
I don’t think the “member of oppressed class gets to be president because of unexpected death” set-up is inherently bad; it’s easy to imagine a good show starting from that concept, if the show has good writing and makes the central character capable and interesting.
What bothers me more about CiC is that I hear it’s going to make her family life more of a focus than West Wing does. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that – all Presidents have families, and there are obviously interesting dramatic possibilities in that situation – but it’s galling that they just-so-happen to focus more on the family when the President is a woman.
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Grover Cleveland is even more interesting that you note. He fathered an illegitimate child. That came out during his campaign, and became a huge issue. What he did then should have been a lesson to Bill Clinton; he immediately acknowledged that the child was his, and got out in front of the issue. If Bill Clinton had done the same, perhaps his legislative agenda wouldn’t have been consumed by the scandal his denial and subsequent discovery caused.
???
Bill Clinton should have fathered a child out of wedlock with Monica Lewinsky ?
Amp: After watching last night’s opening episode, my opinion is that this show will be a weak knock off of the West Wing with the added bonus that every week viewers have the entertainment of watching a woman get debased, questioned, threatened, humiliated, etc., all because she was born with a a coochie.
If this show was about a black male banker or insurance agent during the Jim Crow era and there were constant references to his inferiority, threats to hang him if he infringed on other’s turf, comments about his sexuality, his intelligence, etc., would you expect a strong Black audience? Wouldn’t you expect that the audience would be offended that such a message is still being promoted, yes promoted, in the thinly disquised veil of “drama” or “entertainment”?
This show is sexist and offensive, but both are hidden behind the realistic drama it is supposed to represent. Fuck, there is nothing new about this show, and it is a message I hear just about every day. Why do I have to look to prime time entertainment and find it there? If I were an eight year old girl, the message I would come away with from this show is that woman are indeed inferior — because that is the majority opinion being represented… even by characters that are supposedly there to support her.
alsis39 –
No. As soon as the scandal hit, even before he was forced to testify about it, Bill Clinton should have come out and said something along the lines of, “Yes, I did have sex with that woman. It was a mistake, and it’s something that I’ll have to deal with in my personal life with my wife and children. But I don’t think it has anything to do with whether or not the policies of this Administration are the best thing for this country. I think that those people who are trying to derail those policies by taking advantage of my personal failings are demagogues who are deliberately avoiding the issue and are seeking to thwart the will of the American public through devious means. We need to stop letting the opposition try to take advantage of what I’ve personally done wrong and do what’s right for America .”
Remember that Bill Clinton wasn’t impeached on the basis that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached because he misled and lied about it, and on that basis left himself open to suspicion that he had misled and lied about other things as well. My guess is that if he’d made the above speech, he’d have never been impeached. But I think he acted in a selfish and immature fashion, setting his own personal interests above the interests of the country, and it cost him and the country in the long run.
[shrug] Just having a bit of fun, RonF. I’m about the last person on Earth whose going to defend Bill Clinton. Though frankly, I doubt his foes would have been even remotely appeased if he’d gone the repentance route. Repentence is for your own team, not the other guy’s team.
Of course, given the rock-star complexe of the average politician, I’m pretty sure you could empty D.C. in an hour if you could magically detect and expel every married elected official who failed to keep it in his pants while in office. :p
Alsis, you could only empty D.C. in an hour if the evacuation plan represented reality. ;)
Nope, Clinton was impeached but he was not removed from office. The only other President to be impeached, Andrew Johnson, also survived the process and was not removed from office.
Sorry, alsis39, I didn’t know where you were going with that.
I’m sure you’re right that Bill Clinton’s hardcore opponents wouldn’t have been appeased; some as a matter of convenience (anything to get him out) and some as a matter of principle. But I’m thinking that there wouldn’t have been enough of them, on their own, to get things rolling to the state that they did where he was impeached and had to drop his domestic agenda to such a low priority. People can understand adultery, but they don’t like being lied to about it. It was that lie, in my opinion, that got enough moderates on board.
Back in the ’70’s, Senator Brooke of Massachusetts (a black Republican!) divorced his wife. He lost his re-election bid. The consensus seemed to be that he didn’t lose because he’d been divorced; he lost because his wife uncovered in a subsequent lawsuit that he had lied to her about his assets and had illegally hidden some of them during the settlement process. Another history lesson that Bill missed. You can do bad stuff and get away with it, but don’t lie about it.
Yeah, Andrew Johnson skated by on one vote. The Senator who was the swing vote that decided to vote against conviction had his political career ruined over it. John F. Kennedy included his story in his book Profiles In Courage.
A friend of mine has posted on a group blog that I am a member of, about the first show. She was not impressed by the narrative “white woman rescues black oppressed Muslim woman”. You can read it at http://ihsan-net.blogspot.com
I have been watching the show, but found tonight a grave mistake. The Roosevelt Roads navy base was mentioned, and any intelligent writer knows that the Roosy Roads navy base, located in Puerto Rico, was closed down more than a year ago. If this show will succeed it must be up to date on all current events.
I have watched every episode of this series, most of them more than one time. Sure, some of the references are a little ‘dated’ (ie the Rosy base in Puerto Rico), but I applaud the writers for the drama they have created. Having said that, there was a change in the creative team recently (director?), and the last episode left me a little disheartened — I hope this change doesn’t alter the momentum the show has been building for me. I really think the network has a homerun on their hands, but they need to handle it correctly.
P.S. Buffy is also one of my favorite shows ever! Go Scooby Gang!
I’ve not seen this show, but I did watch The West Wing. The family dramas and struggles with Bartlet’s MS and his children’s problems and how the presidency affected them were interesting.
I’ll have to give this show a chance, because I like political drama. But, I also like forensic science, so I’m one of the freaks that watches the FBI files and Cold Case. And I seem to recall there being several episodes about male rape outside of prison, and various situations where men were tortured as well. *shrug* If we don’t talk about these things how do we change them. And unfortunately in today’s age, the television *is* the media.
I wish that weren’t so, but I do like to hear the detectives or the DA call some cop or other asshole for a sexist comment about victim blaming in a rape case. I suppose it depends on how the issue is depicted and how the process is shown. ie: does the rapist pay and is the victim supported.
I am so glad to see that Commander in Chief is not in the Top 20. It is not even in the Top 50. Gina (Geena) Davis is an absolute disaster. She cannot even stand properly. It is so great to see that we have got our priorities right and are watching the right shows.
Go West Wing