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After it was announced that the pregnant "World News Tonight" co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas would be replaced by a newscaster too old to get pregnant (Charles Gibson), ABC television's president received a letter of complaint signed by several women's groups, including the National Organization for Women.
"With this action," the letter to ABC read, "and your parallel decision to terminate the series `Commander in Chief,' in which Geena Davis portrayed America's first woman president, you have now managed to eliminate two of the country's most visible women role models and high achievers from your television lineup."
Who? Huh?
Vargas - her status as a role model aside - defended herself from the defense. Nobody wants to be a victim. And it's nice to have a job (she'll transfer to "20/20" this year).
"I am not a pregnant, working mother wronged," she told the press. "I played a crucial and active role in this decision. It's the best thing for me and my family and my career right now. ... I have no complaints."
But I have a complaint, or at least a question for the letter signers: Did you see the show?
President Mackenzie Allen (aka Geena Davis) is indeed "visible" and a "high achiever." She is also very tall and has a man's nickname, Mac. But unlike Vargas, she is not an actual person, with a real family, who lives in the very complicated real world. She is an imaginary character on a television show, which is set, by the way, in a bizarre post-feminist, jerry-built fantasyland that few "role models" would dream up, much less continue watching on television after the first several episodes unless first chloroformed then tied to a chair.
And we'll never get to know if Mac/Geena had the chops to win an election or how she might have conducted herself in the race, since she landed the job by default, as a token female vice president. She assumed the presidency after the incumbent died in office (following emergency brain surgery for a tumor, of course).
Her refusal to step aside and let a real man (the satanic speaker of the House, Donald Sutherland) run the country was probably meant to show a blend of integrity, responsibility, scrappiness and healthy self-regard.
But really it just showed that the scriptwriters weren't up to the prickly task of imagining a woman strong, political and crazy enough to win the presidency without automatically creating a terrifying monster - or a monster in the eyes of prime-time viewers (otherwise known as voters).
Which is not even what bothered me about "Commander in Chief." It's television, after all, and it's not as if Mac/Geena stole the election.
It's her home life that I found disturbing. You don't have to be from the most dysfunctional family in the nation to have noticed, early on, a central-casting creepiness to her smiling/sulking kids and a square-jawed, soap opera blandness to her husband, who seemed small and timid in her presence. You can't imagine him having the nerve to even hold her hand.
Even during their most private moments, without the press and other world leaders looking on, her husband and kids resemble the people whose photos come pre-installed in picture frames.
Is this the only kind of family a commanding, self-assured, brilliant woman like Mac/Geena Davis, former amnesiac assassin ("The Long Kiss Goodnight") and baseball star ("A League of Their Own"), could ever produce? On the other hand, it must be said that her most realistic relative, her mother, seems like a liability. Played by the whiskey-voiced Polly Bergen, she seems, intentionally or not, to barely have the lid on hysteria, as if she resents never having been president herself, wonders how she ended up baking the stupid cookies and might be one national crisis short of a three-day bender. Which would at least be interesting.
It's as if the writers decided that a woman from the far-off future (which, let's face it, is where the first female president comes from) would be more comfortable, or palatable, if they imported her family from the early part of the 20th century - a world out of "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It to Beaver," shows that were canceled long ago, wisely, once they began to go stale.
Maybe if Vargas had a life designed by the creators of "Commander in Chief," she'd find it easier to continue anchoring "World News Tonight" no matter how many babies and husbands and rankled powerful men were in the picture - and even if one of them were Donald Sutherland.
Either way, sad to say, she'd still probably end up getting canceled.
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Emily Nunn: ernunn@tribune.com
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
