Madam President: Fitz <3 Olivia, Navy Kamala
Week One: The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
How about that 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Madam President viewers?
Isn’t Shonda Rhimes a genius of popular televisual eroticism?
More on that below.
As television, the public feed of the 2024 Chicago DNC was most successful in showcasing the deep bench of American democratic impulse and the ascension of Vice President Harris, while illuminating the “We Are Family” and “We The People” themes at the center of The American Thing.
Tuning into the convention spectacle felt like catching a long-overdue American firmware update.
Navy Kamala has arrived.
PINK KAMALA, BLUE KAMALA, NAVY KAMALA
Both The Hollywood Reporter and The Washington Post reported on Madam Vice President Harris’s choice to sport a monochrome navy custom pantsuit pussybow look from Chloé as she accepted the 2024 Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America.
Who remembers the Vogue cover controversy of 2021? Pink Kamala or Blue Kamala?
The dueling Kamala Harris Vogue covers of 2021.
“OLIVIA POPE,” PRINCESS OF SHONDALAND
What is the significance of Scandal characters Olivia Pope” (Kerry Washington) and “Fitzgerald Grant” (Tony Goldwyn) appearing prominently together during Night 4 of the 2024 DNC Convention? Why blend this pop and this politics?
I’m still reflecting on that question.
Their role seems to have been to boost the contrast, yet provide soothing continuity, between our televisual political fantasizing of the 2010s and our current televisually-dependent American political reality.
Scripted dramatic television is powerful. People willingly suspend disbelief and at least consider melting into whatever it is selling. For example, who watching the 2024 DNC and feeling warm Scandal fuzzies remembers what criminals “Oliva” and “Fitz” turned out to be? And their respective staffers? The tagline of the show could be “Violating The Constitution while loving one another.”
What did anyone watching the 2024 DNC Convention who had never watched Scandal (2012-2018) make of those host interludes? They must have found them confusing.
When Scandal debuted, ”Olivia Pope” appeared as a glamorous and bold attorney and Washington “fixer” who famously refers to herself and her associates as “gladiators.” This “Olivia Pope” had a designer white apartment, a designer white wardrobe, and a preference for red wine. She is a boss, but it is complicated. It looks good, but then it all begins to fall apart. We struggle with her across six seasons.
SPOILER: “OLIVIA POPE” HACKED OHIO VOTING MACHINES TO STEAL A UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FOR HER MARRIED REPUBLICAN BOYFRIEND, A FORMER GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA.
Representation-wise, “Olivia” is a TV daughter of the Obama era: glossy and projecting smooth hyperconfidence. The character contains multitudes, including, it turns out, a deep state political family backstory whose ramifications far exceed the “poor little American political scions” issues baked into the white characters of “President Fitzgerald Grant” and “First Lady Mellie Grant” (later “First Woman POTUS Mellie Grant”).
The ravingly interdependent frenemyship and grudging genuine affection that develops between “Olivia Pope” and “Mellie Grant” (Bellamy Young) remains one of my favorite arcs within the series.
Over the series run, the audience identifies with “Olivia Pope,” cheers for her, yells at the screen when she behaves self-destructively, observes her in charge and out of power, vulnerable and victimizer, deeply beloved and deeply resented, betrayed and betrayer, fierce and fearsome.
In the end, as we cut from the shot of a woman and girl viewing the official portrait of “President (?) Olivia Pope,” she becomes just another main character in the Great American Soap Opera of The Republic. No big deal. Just another notable woman who has done the job while bringing to it her own inimitable style. Just like the remarkable Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, Roslyn Carter, Betty Ford, back to Abagail Adams and, yes, Sally Hemings.
Is “Olivia Pope” BRAT? “Olivia Pope” is All-American SuperBRAT spy OG by design. She suffers unabashedly from main character syndrome, and that is the point.
The character “Olivia Pope” was inspired loosely by attorney / reputation management and crisis consultant Judy Smith: https://judysmith.com/media-press/
In a 2022 Shondaland interview looking back at the decade since the network premiere of Scandal, Smith had this to say: https://www.shondaland.com/shondaland-series/shondaland-legacy-shows/a39728966/judy-smith-scandal-anniversary/
She talks about how representation matters. Kerry Washington was the first black woman actress to play the lead in an American prime-time network television show since the 1974-1975 run of Get Christie Love starring Teresa Graves.
Watching Scandal, we the Shondalandians witnessed the emergence of Shonda Rimes’s signature bold integration of women, sexual minority, and ethnic minority characters as protagonists of The Ton — in this case, WashingTON — and into America’s post-911 and social media-informed, political espionage thriller-based civic imagination.
Imagining and injecting a mythically and culturally re-calibrated contemporary black woman into the core of a sensational domestic political drama normalized seeing black women navigating power, calling shots, and managing heat.
Read more about it
Adams, S., Moffit, K. R., & Jackson, R. L. [Editors]. (2019). Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal. Syracuse University Press. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/99/gladiators-in-suits/
PRESIDENT FITZGERALD GRANT APPROVES THIS MESSAGE
More background: Tony Goldwyn speaking at the 2016 DNC introducing “The Mothers of the Movement”: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/actor-tony-goldwyn-addresses-the-dnc/
As far as I am aware, Tony Goldwyn appeared in association with his Shondaland television character “President Fitzgerald Grant” twice during the 2024 public telecast.
On the First Night, “Fritz” delivered a full speech.
On the Fourth Night, he handed it over to the women. “Fitz” fetched “Olivia Pope” her smartphone, helped lead DNC attendees in a group selfie moment, then played out getting shooed off the stage as host Kerry Washington transitioned to introducing Kamala Harris’s great-nieces, helping them lead us in the “Comma-La” cheer, then helping them to their seats in the very front row.
As the NYT notes, her 2024 appearance “marks the third time Ms. Washington has spoken at a political convention. In 2012, she delivered remarks at former President Barack Obama’s second nominating convention, and in 2020 she was one of several celebrities to emcee President Biden’s virtual convention.”
McFadden, A. (2024, August 23). Kerry Washington Knows TV Politics. Now She’s Hosting a Real Party. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/us/politics/kerry-washington-dnc.html
As “Olivia Pope” herself might say, “Moving on.”
Kamala Harris is neither BRAT, nor FICTIONAL
Scandal character-wise?
Vice President Kamala Harris would be most believable as a US Senator from California who once called on “Olivia Pope and Associates” when she found herself targeted by a blackmailer wielding potentially compromising Freaknik photos from back in the day, yet who still investigated and at least attempted to throw “Olivia Pope”’s and “Fitzgerald Grant”’s asses in jail long before Season 14.
A TV character inspired by the real Kamala Harris would fit right in on Law and Order: California or, actual television-wise, on The Diplomat (2023- )
By the final gavel, I had imaginatively re-framed “Olivia and Fitz” as couple of familiar VIP “Never Trump” Republicans who had shown up at the 2024 DNC in defense of The Republic.
Television Loves Female Presidents as Long as They’re Republican (2015, Serena Elavia for The Atlantic)
Oh, television.
Madams President: Conclusions so far
The Scandal-ous interludes during the 2024 Democratic National Convention encapsulated the inscriptive work of the popular television series and placed that work in perspective. The “Fritz <3s Olivia skit” seated us for the real show: The global pan-network debut of Navy Kamala, Kamala Harris as Commander-in-Chief (non-fictional).
Hometown: Oakland California.
Public school
Undergraduate: Howard.
Law: University of California Hastings College of the Law.
First of her name, the eldest daughter of immigrants, baller, current Vice President of the United States, past United States Senator from the State of California, past Attorney General of the State of California, prosecutor. Her family seems sane enough, stable, and nice.
Politico feature from August 2021:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/18/kamala-harris-law-school-politics-503924
How can news reports assert Kamala Harris has failed to define herself?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-they-are-reporting-it-kamala-harris-dnc-speech-2024-08-23/
Attempting to digest DNC 2024 reminds me that I do not have eyes to see what went down in the mytho-cultural rhizomatics of the 2024 Republican National Convention. Tim Alberta was there. The whole game shifted for the red team when Biden dropped out, though, so who knows what further madness they are preparing.
I wasn’t planning to re-watch Scandal as part of the Madam President: Streaming Transformativity II project; now I must do it purely to review the Kerry Washington - Bellamy Young action.
I kept getting polled last week about who gave the best speech at the 2024 DNC. I couldn’t answer before now, but now I can tell you. It’s a tie between Geoff Duncan, the pissed-off and principled Rebel Republican from Georgia, and former First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama.
I suspect a great part of the reason a sector of Americans keep clamoring for Michelle Obama to run for President is because that is how it has tended to go down in popular television drama of the post-911 period until very recently: First Ladies ascend to office in House of Cards and Scandal. How weird is that? Note that is not how it works in the worlds of more contemporary dramas, including The Diplomat (Netflix, 2023- ), or The Night Agent (Netflix, 2023), obviously, Motherland: Fort Salem (2020-22).
Michelle Robinson Obama is never, ever, ever running for President, but, having lived it, she knows what’s up for real. Around the 12-minute mark in her address on the second evening of the 2024 Democratic Convention, Mrs. Obama mentioned the torrent of insults the Obamas have withstood over the years, warning that the same firehose was about to be turned on the Harris-Walz campaign.
She reminded the audience, “Look, it’s his same old con. It’s the same con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”
For the record, Ann Coulter fired the first bullet.
See also
Madam President: Streaming Transformativity II