Posted on 04/20/2018 5:57:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
The intense fear and loathing that permeates news coverage of President Donald Trump is being multiplied on television dramas. Impeachment scenarios and 25th Amendment removal strategies are rolling around in the brains of scriptwriters.
Barbara Hall, the creator of the pro-Hillary Clinton CBS show "Madam Secretary," claimed "We just take things that are already in the atmosphere, and if we find them interesting in terms of a civics lesson, we show you what it would look like. We're not campaigning for it. We're not politicizing it, really. We're just saying, 'Here's what the process looks like.'"
Agenda? What agenda? It's a civics lesson.
So CBS debuted a show called "Madam Secretary" with a heroic white female secretary of state in 2014, and it wasn't intended to promote the presidential ambitions of Hillary Clinton. It was merely showing "what the process looks like" when there's a noble, intelligent female president in waiting.
In January, "Madam Secretary" had an episode where the president sounds too recklessly war-mongering about going after Russia with "force and ferocity" ("fire and fury," anyone?), so our Madam Secretary and the White House chief of staff plot to remove him via the 25th Amendment.
Can anyone imagine this plot twist if President Clinton were in office? We'd suggest there would be other topics for hot scripts, maybe a plot or two about the sexist "deep state" and crypto-fascist Congress that can't abide a brilliant female chief executive.
CBS is also pushing an even less fictional scenario in its streaming program "The Good Fight," a sequel to another Hillary-inspired drama, "The Good Wife." This show has real-life liberal horror Donald Trump at its center. The liberal lawyer main character, Diane Lockhart, has her firm competing with others in getting a piece of the Democratic Party's impeachment business after the midterm elections.
"It's become this wet dream. We wanted to satirize that while (being realistic) about how Democrats, in our imaginations, are preparing to prosecute it," said the show's creator, Robert King. "With something very controversial in the news, it's always fun to drive toward it, not run away from it." Later this season, King and his wife and co-creator, Michelle, are promising an episode that exploits the tabloidish DNC-funded Trump-Russia dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele.
The Kings do put some wretched liberal excess in their plot. A character played by Audra McDonald makes it plain she doesn't care whether the allegations that remove Trump are true or false, as long as they work.
CBS is also employing a 25th Amendment plot over on the CBS-owned cable channel Showtime, in "Homeland." Here their paranoid female president Elizabeth Keane is fighting with her vice president, who begs her not to create a crisis by firing cabinet members who would vote to remove her.
On ABC, the show "Designated Survivor" has its noble HUD Secretary-turned-president Tom Kirkman facing a 25th Amendment process after his wife was killed in a car accident and he turned to a therapist, whose tapes discussing the president's mental state have been leaked to the press. Kirkman is no Trump. He's more of a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington character. But impeachment is impeachment.
In The Washington Post, TV writer Scott Tobias unloaded an unintentionally funny line that these writers are "working at a time when television has embraced open partisanship, rejecting the firm political neutrality of the past." Because in the Bush years, ABC's female-president drama "Commander-in-Chief" or NBC's heroic Democrat in "The West Wing" were firmly neutral?
Is Hollywood just indulging itself with a liberal fantasy? Or is it preparing the public to accept impeachment and/or removal of the president as a desirable reality? If our times are so extremely partisan and desperate, why should we imagine this is all just a fictional exercise?
Word to the wise: Hollywood is having a bigger impact than most realize.
These people believe they are subtle.
If you go and look at viewership of Madam Secretary....for CBS, it’s number 20 of their 26 scripted shows on air. Each season, since 2014, it’s lost 20-percent of it’s viewership. The whole angle to political intrigue and fake politics isn’t selling to the general public anymore. Rumor suggests that the network is still debating if it’ll return for a 2019 season (5th season).
If you look at all of the networks...they’ve got a problem in that the formulas they used for the past decade....just won’t work anymore.
I used to say, even before Obama was running for president, that if aliens came here and only knew what they saw in movies and fictional TV, they would think:
1. Most US presidents were either black or female.
2. Virtually everyone uses Apple computers.
Homeland has worked the impeachment angle hard this season as well.
Meanwhile, if real Americans watch network TV at all, they’ll tune in to Rosanne.
And it’s only 30 minutes.
Hollywood thinks it’s too clever by half.
Do people actually watch these propaganda shows on TV?? Why?, In fact why would anyone here patronize these shows when their main goal is Destroy you and everything you believe in??
I have’t watched a TV “show” in 30 plus years
I sure don’t
[Warning:Spoiler Alert] Watched the finale of Scandal, with its own impeachment scenario. All I can say is, after seven seasons, is this the best the writers could come up with?
From the “white privilege” preach to the portrait of a non-President in the White House to gun control, it was total BS. To top it all off, riding off into the sunset with illicit lover was trite and not believable.
All in all, it gets an F.
The American people don’t care.
They’re completely isolated in Hollywood and haven’t figured out Trump is popular enough to beat impeachment.
Unlike Richard Nixon, he isn’t going anywhere.
“These people believe they are subtle.”
We watched a recent episode of Chicago Med last night on Hulu. One hospital ED admission case was a 9-year old girl with pain in her groin. An exam revealed “her” testicles hadn’t dropped and were twisted & lacked blood flow. The testicles would die without an operation to save them. The mother was shocked, wanted her little girl to continue being a little girl... wanted the testicles removed. The docs argued against it. The ED psychologist said they would have to EXPLAIN it to the 9-year old and GET her permission because “current agreement”in the psych community was to do it that way.
Really? The program writers are floating this? A 9 year old, in bed in the hospital, in pain...is the one to make the decision?
Chicago Med is no longer one of my favorites...
I don’t get it. Are we supposed to believe undescended testicles are not accompanied by a penis?
For comedy I watch the commercials. The are a hoot with political propaganda, whiles selling TP, insurance , milk, frozen meals, etc!
“I don’t get it. Are we supposed to believe undescended testicles are not accompanied by a penis?”
I didn’t get it either (first thing that came to mind...what exactly WAS the structure down there). But, I guess they weren’t worried about the facts as long as they could preach their SJW BS at us.
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