Cronyism took it in the shorts last week. The good ol’ boy network got what was coming.
First, Donald Sutherland ended the pilot of “Commander In Chief” looking nauseated as he observed the first female president’s address to Congress. President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) wowed them in spite of the bitter Speaker of the House (Sutherland), who evidently sabotaged the teleprompter.
Second, in the world of the less glamorous but equally melodramatic commander in chief, a blustery Texas conservative ideologue was indicted on a charge of conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. Rep. Tom DeLay’s exit line was characteristically bombastic: He dismissed the charges as “one of the weakest and most baseless indictments in American history.”
Then he and Sutherland retired to a smoke-filled back room to plot and scheme next week’s episode. Or maybe we imagined that part.
Where’s the strong, beautiful, long-legged, puffy-lipped Independent when we need her?
As in any compelling drama, the suspense for both Presidents George W. Bush and Mackenzie S. Allen keeps ratcheting up. The stakes get ever higher. The key difference is pacing: We have to wait until Tuesday for another installment of the TV presidency. For the commander-in-chief in the actual Oval Office, the tension never eases.
Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff immediately made the link from DeLay to Jack Abramoff on CNN’s Larry King. In the wake of the arrest of David H. Safavian, a former White House budget official, on charges of obstructing the Abramoff investigation, it seemed as though a house of cards was about to fall. Surely it will happen in time for the November sweeps?
Really, it must be frustrating for Hollywood writers. You can’t make this stuff up.
The DeLay allegations will be thoroughly investigated, and nobody is rushing to judgment, except certain cable news networks. Republican defenders (i.e. Fox News Channel) defaulted to denial mode, standing by their man DeLay. Ann Coulter was in fine form, keeping a straight face while assuring viewers there is nothing to the charges.
The best visual aid for the DeLay indictment came from CNN’s Ali Velshi who set up three coffee cups to convey the idea to “we nonlawyers.” The first cup was labeled “corporations”; the second, “TRMPAC,” for the Texans for Republican Majority political action committee; the third, “RNC-TX,” for the Texas state Republican National Committee.
Distributing dollar bills from the first to the second to the third cup, Velshi asked whether it was possible that the money from the first was intended to go to the third, which would have been illegal.
“We sometimes use the word ‘laundering,”‘ he said. “That’s the question.”
It doesn’t get more basic than that, or more suited to the fleeting medium. Volumes will be written before the case is over, pundits will yammer and legal experts will opine, but the improvised demo with the three cups will linger in memory.
The best nonvisual prompt, offered by CNN’s Bill Schneider, was equally vivid. “Say DeLay’s name to most Americans,” he said, “and what image comes forward? Terry Schiavo.”
During the Schiavo debate, then embattled House Majority Leader DeLay drew parallels between Schiavo’s situation and his own. According to a report in Time.com, he “implicitly asked the conservatives (at a Washington, D.C., gathering of the Family Research Council) to come to his defense as they had Schiavo’s.”
Last week, DeLay hardly had to ask. The folks on Fox News weren’t going to pull the plug.
“Your client’s out talking,” Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren said to DeLay’s lawyer Dick Deguerin. “Is that on your advice?”
Deguerin replied that he can’t muzzle DeLay and, moreover, is sure of DeLay’s innocence.
Van Susteren played along, agreeing it may be “just a nutty indictment.” Then she cut to the reliable tabloid story of missing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba, known to avid Fox News viewers as, simply, “Natalee.”
In a TV script, she would report to a colorful cable network boss with ties to the GOP. But that’s almost too contrived.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
