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Madam Secretary… Liberal Fantasies and the Reshaping of American Perception
Truth, they say, is often stranger than fiction. In the case of CBS’ new political drama they are also complete strangers.
In what is an almost too transparent attempt to create a false image of Hillary Clinton in the form of Téa Leoni, the main character of Madam Secretary is everything that Hillary Clinton is not: engaging, charismatic, insightful, creative, attractive, and experienced. These, however, are simply the surface attributes that completely separate the truth from the fiction. Even in the construction of the background and temperament of the character, CBS diverges from reality in a manner sure to please every liberal grandstander while he projects Elizabeth Faulkner McCord — how that name just roll on the tongue! — fictional bona fides onto Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The story begins with our former CIA-operative-turned-modern-history-professor enjoying an idyllic life with her strong-willed intelligent children and loving, dashingly good-looking husband. All this is changed by the sudden death of the current Secretary of State, which precipitates her former boss — now the American President — to present her with the job. “A job,” he somberly declares, “only you can do.” Thus begins her whirlwind move to D.C. where she cavalierly dismisses handlers, stylists, and speech writers who are befuddled and thwarted by this strong, clever, and dangerously witty woman now at the helm of State! It doesn’t end there, of course.
During the pilot episode, she deftly uses her CIA contacts to secretly negotiate the release of two young boys who have been captured by the Syrian government. The mission, of course, can never see the light of day or of the press, ably demonstrating how much critical work is accomplished behind the scenes, and for which of course she will never get public credit. You see? The hard work of a truly skilled Secretary of State is proven by how much she doesn’t seem to accomplish! Only in the absence of notable deeds can we know for certain that great things are actually being achieved.
In the midst of all of this covert work on behalf of humanity, our shrewd Madam Secretary exploits the game players of D.C. by making use of the White House stylist to distract the media. Note: Tea Leoni pulls off in an A-line wool coat suit what Hillary — and many other women — wish they could, and might, if they were a professional actress with a great body and all the right camera angles. But this ruse for the cameras hides her critical work which must be kept secret and the gambit pays off. The young boys are returned to their family and no one is the wiser… Queen takes Media Pawn, check!
At the end of the show, the now more confident Secretary Clinton — I mean, McCord! — is having dinner with the King of Swaziland and his ten wives. She expertly corners the King into agreeing to work harder to combat AIDS and wows the crowd by addressing each wife by name, garnering a begrudging respectful tip of his champagne glass by the King… Queen takes Queens, check mate!
Now, is the purpose of this post to simply act as some kind of grumpy conservative spoiler? No, although it may also accomplish that. It is, however, to draw attention to the reality that the current political fight. We are engaged in a conflict for our government and the future of our republic, and its being fought with weapons Republicans and conservatives are not adept at using. We all know this but we don’t apparently know is what to do about it.
What seems to be missing is the calm, steady and focused voice of a counter-narrative that is grounded in reality and used with confidence. If we conservatives can insistently and effectively push our message, then we can win back the minds of enough Americans to win another presidential election and reacquire some rational measurements of our country’s economic and political condition, both of which are not great.
If we fail to find a way — or the will to get into the public ears and minds — then we will most certainly see Hillary dressed up in a fictional version of herself, ready for public consumption and acclaim by an all too willing industry that makes its living inventing imaginary greatness. That will only make things harder for us, as pointing out the truth will distract from our positive philosophy. We place value on individual achievement, that the whole of society benefits when each person strives for their highest potential. We understand and encourage financial independence because we understand that a person who earns their way out of poverty understands best how not to succumb to it again.
Conservatives have traditionally fostered smaller more accountable government, prudence in fiscal obligations in order to keep taxes low, and a military that focuses on readiness and capability without a mantle of aggression. When did these values become something for which we should be ashamed or which became so very difficult to articulate? If we have grown ashamed of speaking up and taking principled stands for fear of alienating some particular block of voters, then we will also never be able to persuade them to our perspective.
If we will not persuade, then rest assured they will parade; in due course, we will witness to a candidate of theirs strolling up Pennsylvania Avenue in the Emperor’s new A-line wool coat suit woven from the best fiction money and air time can buy.
Published in Culture, General
Good post.
That show is getting bad reviews by the liberals. They realize it’s too obvious.
I recently read some Louis L’amour books. For those that don’t know, he wrote fiction about the old west (in the United States).
Now, he was probably conservative, but his stories weren’t political. They just happened to be chock full of conservative values.
I honestly don’t know how to take back the culture. But a conservative version of “Madam Secretary” isn’t the way to do it.
Why would anybody want to watch this?
Well, that is actually my point. I don’t think our answer is in fiction but in reality. Not on perception of an individual or ideology but the empirical observation of what has failed and what has worked.
Geena Davis back in 2005 tried to get Hillary elected by playing President Mackenzie Allen in “Commander in Chief” on ABC. May this be just as successful. (Also, nice review. Thanks for taking the bullet, M.G.)
I suppose this is revenge for “Citizens United.”
Many people have been converted by Rush – primarily because is style can be a lot of fun. Ditto Mark Steyn.
The underlying conclusion is simple: we MUST entertain while we educate. No matter the medium, we must be readable/watchable/listenable.
Tea Leoni as Hillary Clinton – Now that has got to be one of Bill Clinton’s favorite liberal fantasies.
I doubt it. As delicious as Teo Leoni is, Bill has never been choosy. If anything, he seems to prefer his women zaftig.
And R. Emmett Tyrell, P.J. O’Rourke, & Dennis Miller.
Tea Leoni, thats why.
I think you have it right here. I do not hear many conservatives articulating a strong message on limited government.
The ghosts of West Wing arise in this new fantasy series. Liberals identify themselves as being like the people on West Wing and Madam Secretary, and believe that Conservatives look, and act like the people on Duck Dynasty, Swap People, and Dirty Jobs.
Brought to you by the same people who mocked Dan Quayle endlessly for using a fictional character to make a point. Amazing , isn’t it.
This show won’t last a full season. Aaron Sorkin caught lighting in a bottle with “The West Wing” but that was a decade ago. Political dramas only draw interest these days when they’re edgy and over-the-top, like “Scandal” or Netflix’s “House of Cards”.
I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t yet produced a sitcom about a former Republican governor and her gun-totin’, four-wheel-lovin’ hillbilly family.
Also this month PBS put on the 14 hour Ken Burns progressive extravaganza on ‘The Roosevelts’ in which the entire purpose of conservatism was to prevent good things from happening. Two months before the election, nothing subtle there because, as we all know, PBS is non-partisan
CBS? What is this “CBS” you speak of?
I hope the show has dismal ratings just like MSNBC and CNN do these days.
They don’t need to. Sarah Palin did it for them.
Only the best network on broadcast television, and the only one left which still makes shows for boomers like me.
Blue Bloods, NCIS, and The Good Wife are damned good hour dramas. CBS News Sunday Morning is intelligent, expansive, and often quite moving. Four season tickets on my DVRs puts them in first place, tied with AMC, PBS, and Fox News.
Their news division is liberal, but they also have a top roster of specialty journalists. And Bob Schieffer’s Sunday show may be biased, but not intentionally so like the ones at ABC and NBC.
CBS has lost its touch for intelligent, ground-breaking ensemble comedies, but so has everyone else. CBS also failed to claim a big piece of the basic cable landscape, a decision worth billions in lost opportunities.
But just as Fox News swept up the huge audience made available by the single-perspective journalists of the competition, CBS is highly profitable and #1 in total viewers because it is the sole, commercially-sponsored entertainment network featuring actors 55+ in leading roles.
I agree. I don’t want a “conservative version of __.” Remember Fox’s answer to The Daily Show? It was like a Daily Show parody of what a conservative version of The Daily Show would be like. It was painfully bad. I just want good shows and stories that are high-quality, don’t have an ax to grind, and are not bed-wettingly liberal. “King of the Hill” was conservative in tone, but never made a big deal about it. Though occasionally they had exchanges like the following, where Hank and Peggy Hill are arguing about whether girls should be allowed on the boys’ wrestling team (and f0r my money, one of the best jokes of the entire show):
Peggy: They put a woman on the Supreme Court. Did that ruin the Supreme Court, Hank?
Hank: Yes, she did. And that woman’s name was Earl Warren.
Even so, that flowed naturally from Hank’s character.
Watching Téa Leoni act is like watching .. well, Mariel Hemmingway try to act.
I won’t believe it’s supposed to be Hillary until she throws a half empty Old Fashioned glass at a staffer.
I watched the first episode, just to know. And it was terrible. The ONLY person in the entire show who’s capable of doing anything is Téa Leoni’s character. EVERYONE in the administration is a bumbling, incompetent boob. Except her. Everything she did she did right and well, even writing part of her own press release when her PRESS STAFFERS couldn’t come up with the right words.
There’s a state dinner for some African king, and nine (or whatever) wives are in attendance. Téa insults him in a huge breach of etiquette, replying sarcastically that she only has one husband in response to some idiotic thing he said, and everyone’s on pins and needles to see what happens. Of course he eventually bursts out laughing, validating her comment that in any real-world situation would’ve cause a minor crisis. Then she does it again, confronting him about an issue that used to be front-burner for him but no longer is, but that she wants on the front-burner. So he – OF COURSE – agrees with her. (Oh, AND she remembers AND pronounces correctly every wife’s tongue-twister-name. Totally absurd and unreal.)
If only diplomacy were that easy.
The show is terrible. It is heavy-handed and a complete farce.The writing stinks, the acting isn’t far behind, and the only thing it has going for it is that Téa is still easy on the eyes.
She spends the ENTIRE show being smarter, quicker, more competent, and more brilliant than EVERY ONE ELSE, including the president’s chief of staff. In fact, the primary plot line of the show had her going behind the CoS’s back to lobby the president directly on an issue that the CoS wouldn’t take to the president. Well, the president agreed with Téa, they did the deal her way, the hostages came home safe and sound, and once again SHE was Superwoman and everyone else was a dunce.
So, then the inevitable show-closing confrontation between the Chief of Staff and Téa: he scolds her with such harsh, cutting language as “You’ll find that I’m a better ally than opponent.” (great writing…)
She responds, “Same here.” and then when the CoS leaves the room she lets out a looooooooooooooooong, dramatic sigh, as if she just dodged a huge bullet.
For crying out loud, she just spent the past hour eating everyone else’s lunch and single-handedly saving the world, as well as 2 college-kid Americans who were going to be executed by Syria. She was Batman, Spiderman, and Thor rolled into one.
And the writers and the producers of the show had her sighing mightily in relief…because the (obviously incompetent) Chief of Staff looked at her crosseyed?
It is baaaaaad.
‘course by 2016 enough low-information voters will conflate Téa Leoni with Hillary Clinton and will vote for Her Thighness because of this show, which I suspect will not be canceled before 2017, no matter the ratings.
(sorry for repeating some of M’sG’s review’s points; I copied this from a review I wrote and posted elsewhere)
I remember when ABC was promoting that show a lot. The producers and Miss Davis said this was going to be very even-handed politically. Not every Democrat was portrayed as wonderful, but the dirt bags were always Republicans.
MG,
Luckily Hillary & Clinton Inc. still have a lot of clout with the MSM. Coverage of this recent confrontation at a town meeting in the middle west was suppressed. Hillary may not have looked her best.
Regards,
Jim
And not only that, but the hostage plot line could’ve spanned several episodes, maybe even been a season-long storyline. Instead, they had Téa solve the crisis in about a 30-second negotiation in which she got everything she wanted and they got nothing.
She traded a million dollars – in medical supplies and humanitarian aid, not hard currency, to a regime so sensitive to people’s sensibilities that they were going to execute a couple of college kids! – a million dollars of that stuff. Yes, a million dollars’ worth.
What, did the brainiac writers and producers find in the trash a script that the Austin Powers franchise discarded as too unrealistic?
Very nauseating.
I could never watch even one episode of West Wing so I’m sure this wouldn’t work for me.
Remember how awful all the movies that Christians put out are. (Zeffirelli and some Catholic stuff excepted.) Doesn’t it seem as though this is a religious endeavor for the left?
My DVR recorded the pilot of this show, even though I don’t recall telling it to. I know the CoC prohibits tinfoil hat theories, so I won’t speculate that it was part of a conspiracy to boost this show’s ratings, nope, must have been my mistake…