Words From the Top

Berkeley Speaks Out

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”
-Mario Savio, 1964

The current crop of crap expelled by the intellectually sterile Hollywood system is an offensive tumor on the grey matter of the American consciousness. In ABC’s Commander-in-Chief, Geena Davis portrays the President of the United States. This is wrong, and we’re here to say it’s wrong.

We don’t want to live in a country where a pretend woman can even imagine being the President. Our fathers didn’t spend twenty-two months in a bamboo cage, stealing rats for milk, just so some redheaded, herbal-essenced suffragette could storm into the fake White House and pretend to wear a pair of pants.

We are personally offended. Why not just tear that purple heart right off our chests? What’s next? A horse for President? Siblings who have sex for President? Where does it end? What happens when the fictional Joint Chiefs are expecting important fictional military orders, and President Easy Bake Oven is too busy having her fictional period to commit ground forces to Serbo-Croatia? We’ll tell you what happens: fictional Croatians die.

Now don’t get us wrong. We have plenty of respect for all things woman. But if the Koran has taught us anything, it’s that “verily, a […] woman [cannot be a television president].”

This whole “not-real female President” thing may play well with a few nutjobs in “New York City,” but in our fictional America, the America of Jed Bartlett, David Palmer, Gene Hackman in Absolute Power, and to a lesser extent Bill Pullman, the President always wears a tie. Except when he’s wearing a sweatshirt from the college which he fictionally attended. Can a fictional woman wear a tie? Not unless she’s Annie Hall. Can a fictional woman go to college? Not unless she’s Annie Hall. Can a fictional woman touch our hearts with an intoxicating mixture of maternal care, genuine love, and absolute craziness? Vote Annie Hall, 2008.