CIC

Look, I'm the last guy to say anything bad about the idea of a female president. The idea, that is. Someday, it will become a reality. When it does, we'll have as good of a chance of getting a Hoover as a Lincoln. Women aren't better, but they are different from men. That said, is Geena Davis's Mackenzie Allen the best Hollywood could come up with?

Apparently, the message we are to take to heart after watching Commander In Chief is that a woman isn't likely to be elected president any time soon, and that her best shot at the Oval Office is by means of the 25th Amendment. (If I were a woman, I'd be insulted at this.) And that a woman would be willing to call in the Marines when as few as two lives are on the line to prove she's got resolve. And that she would send her child to a school where the kids are taught to sing America the Beautiful in French. (I barely made it through the show after that.)

The politics of a presidential candidate choosing a running mate not of his party -- and someone who has broad and significant political disagreements with him -- is nothing more than a fantasy of the politically disaffected. (Considering it's easy enough for a Republican to select a running mate he disagrees with from within his own party.)

Let's pretend for a moment that the circumstances of her ascendancy to the White House are even possible. The most offensive thing to me was that the character of the Speaker of the House (a Republican), who "makes Genghis Khan look like Mahatma Ghandi", is so repulsed by the idea of a woman in the Big Chair -- or so power hungry -- that he will apparently stop at nothing to persuade her to resign, including embasrassing her before a joint session of Congress. That's right, all Republicans are moral reprobates stuck in the 50's. They have an insatiable lust for blood, and they prefer to keep women barefoot, pregnant, and baking cookies for the PTA bake sale. This is the tired, cartoonish cliche which ABC presents as groundbreaking entertainment?

I'm not much for reality TV, but here's hoping the Amazing Race doesn't jump the shark this season.

The show was liveblogged by Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity.

Tags: commander in chief, TV, entertainment