peggy

contact me at peggy1129@aol.com

thanks a bunch.

If this is supposed to be a precursor to Hillary, America is in deep trouble. Can you imagine Hillary having to interrupt a State Dinner to keep tabs on Bill’s escapades?

I’m looking forward to the next episode.

That wouldhave made a hell of a TV show. Our first black president, our first female president, and our first John Bircher president, all wrapped into one.

In defesne of the lack of humor, the president was dying and then died, which doesn’t exaclty make for good mirth-making material. Maybe they’ll use more humor in future episodes.

Yeah,. “first gentleman.” Damn you, I wanted to be the one to point that out!

I didn’t watch—I read a spoiler earlier about the whole everyone-wants-her-to-step-down aspect of the pilot, and that level of sexism is very frustrating when I can’t scream at anyone besides the TV screen. If I were the character, that’d be a different story, ’cause the assholes would be very much within ranting distance and it would be very satisfying. But seeing/reading about sexism without getting a chance to blow up at the perpetrators and have them hear me, is like getting very turned on without getting an orgasm. Read: Frustrating as hell. So I didn’t watch.

Hope it improves, though; I like the idea. Would be wonderful if, by the end of the first season, it’s a show that gets its kicks completely through government/war/other-noteworthy-events/non-gender-controversy etc, and not get any of its novelty from the fact that the person in the oval office doesn’t have a dick. And it would also be wonderful if the writers stopped taking their anti-humor medications.

I thought the subplot of the First Husband adjusting to his new role was more intriguing than the heavy-handed main plotline.

I expected the first episode to focus on the show’s central question: Can a woman be President? That is, after putting my little girls to bed, can I go to sleep confident that there is someone out there who is tracking down people who would make life inconvenient for me, and killing them and anyone else within a 100-ft radius? Of course, I’d never consciously want to vote for that; I much prefer to have those benefits subconsciously, where I don’t have to confront the obvious injustice the policy engenders. It’s like the unstated male privilege checklist, only now in nation-size!

Subconsciously I assume a male is willing to use lethal force and a female is not. So to demonstrate the new President’s bona fides, I’d need to see lethal force, right away. We may deplore Iraq-think, but a female President is in a distinctly weak position to challenge it.

Similarly, I suspect that there are limits on the amount of humor we can expect from a show about a female executive, at least at first. Again, I subconsciously assume that issues are being addressed seriously where a man is in charge; humor merely demonstrates that people are sufficiently confident in that assumption that they don’t need to be concerned about undermining it. Even when the executive is the butt of the joke (Spin City), we don’t assume that the joke is about all men; it’s just about this one. None of these assumptions apply to a female executive. I only feel confident about whether she’s taking matters seriously if she makes a display of her seriousness. And laughing at the foibles of the first woman to become President will likely look a lot like laughing at the concept of a woman President. I suspect the writers will tread carefully there.

To over-compensate, I would expect the writers to create stories in which the President makes conspicuous displays of attributes traditionally associated with masculinity, including seriousness and domination. As counter-balance, I would expect the writers to create stories where the President makes conspicuous displays of attributes traditionally associated with femininity in the domestic sphere, such as concern for her kids. Amp makes it sound as if they’re right on track.