free variable

ABC has been shilling their fall show Commander In Chief (which stars Geena Davis as the President) as if it presented some sort of revolutionary challenge to established order. Ads for this show have aired frequently during football games, and each focuses on how audacious ABC is for presenting an alternate reality that features a female president. This is a transparently ridiculous stance.

It would be audacious for ABC to present a political drama that didn’t rely on stunt concept work (“look! shockingly, there is a female president!”) or thinly-veiled, reductive riffs on current debates (cf. any political wish-fulfillment show). It would be audacious and unprecedented for ABC to present a television show that accurately depicted Christianity. Even merely targeting one or two standard deviations above the lowest common denominator might make for superior television. But creating a television show that presents some “fantastic” occupant of the White House does nothing revolutionary. (Indeed, by presenting the “female President” concept as a notable absurdity, ABC may be doing a small part to poison the well for women who would seek our nation’s highest office.)

If I were interested in exploring the unique concerns of elected talking goats in a dramatic work, I could create a fantasy world in which a talking goat was president. It would be dishonest, even by advertising standards, for me to say “this fantasy world is notably audacious, for it features a talking goat as president!” One fictitious universe is not substantially more audaciously constructed than any other, and the parameters of my fantasy world do not affect the real world at all. Certainly a talking-goat president is far less probable than a female human president. Does this make the talking-goat president concept revolutionary?

Also less probable than a female president: the teenaged president (e.g. Doogie Howser, Commander-In-Chief), the non-US-citizen president, the not-beholden-to-527s-and-campaign-contributors president and the recently-thawed-caveperson president.

It seems to me that any possible scenario for a political wish-fulfillment drama is roughly equivalent in terms of absolute plausibility. (Doesn’t the president on NBC’s The West Wing have a Ph.D.? Give me a break!) Why, then, is ABC treating the concept of a woman president as if it were a uniquely absurd, high-fantasy scenario — and as if this rather pedestrian premise alone should be sufficient motivation to watch what appears to be an unusually dismal hour of television?