How Similar Is Ta Leonis Character on Madam Secretary to Hillary Clinton?
Hillary Clinton once joked, If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle. In the first episode of the new hit CBS dramaMadam Secretary, the title character does exactly that. Co-creators Morgan Freeman and executive producer Lori McCreary admit that the show which stars Ta Leoni as Elizabeth McCord, the secretary of State in the age of terrorism and internet-based security breaches was inspired by Clintons tenure in the office. And thats not the only similarity between the two women. For example, Clinton once said in a speech, There are three legs to the stool of American foreign policy: defense, diplomacy, and development. And we are responsible for two of the three legs. Similarly, Leoni has incredible legs.
But key differences also abound: Clinton traveled more than any of her predecessors, while her fictional counterpart is now several months into the job and doesn't appear to have traveled at all. And, predictably for a lead character on network TV, McCord approaches unrealistic perfection: She speaks French, German, Arabic, and Farsi (Clinton: only English), and shes been given the job because shes the least political person the president knows (Clinton: a tad more Machiavellian). Still, the doppelgngers have more in common than not. For one, they both read scripts. Also, they both spell Madam without the ultimate e, so clearly they hate the French. Below, we compare and contrast Clinton and McCord, tally which Madam Secretary plots were ripped from actual headlines, and predict which parts of Hillarys reign will be fictionalized next.
FAMILY
RESUM
ADVERSARIES
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
The first three episodes borrow plots from some of the biggest trials of Clintons appointment. In the pilot, two American brothers are arrested in Syria and accused of spying (a.k.a. Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, caught hiking on the Iran-Iraq border in 2009). The second episode deals with an armed mob outside an American embassy (this time in Sanaa, Yemen, rather than Benghazi, Libya). And in the third episode, McCord manages the fallout from a WikiLeaks-type security breach.
The story lines are so similar, the only differences between fact and fiction are in the Secretary's responses. On CBS, McCord seems to be righting the wrongs of the past, of which she of course isnt always aware. Time and again, she gets it right, sometimes miraculously, and never while compromising her integrity. Remembering that opponents called Hillary Lady Macbeth during Bills presidential campaign, it seems that Madam Secretary endeavors to reposition her as Desdemona a virtuous woman wrongly accused. If thats the case, the writers will have plenty of material to revisit. If our predictions for future plotlines are correct, McCord will ...
... travel to Russia to successfully block the incarceration of an anarchist rock band called Vagina Brawl.
... visit troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she actually is under hostile fire from snipers, yet she tells no press about it later.
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How Similar Is Ta Leonis Character on Madam Secretary to Hillary Clinton?