Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics

5. Fact or Fiction: The Reality of Race and Gender in Reaching the White House

5 Fact or Fiction The Reality of Race and Gender in Reaching the White House Lilly J. Goren I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black. —Shirley Chisholm In 2008, we watched as an African American man first won the presidential nomination of one of the two major parties and then, in November, was elected to the American presidency. Former president George W. Bush noted, the day after the 2008 election, that “it will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House. I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have awaited so long.”1 For a president not regularly known for his eloquence, this statement appropriately encapsulated the emotions of many Americans, whether or not they were supporters of Barack Obama. Acknowledging the stirring sight of America’s first minority president coming through the doors of the White House with his family, a house built by slaves from whom his wife and children are descended, puts the promise of the presidency (and the ideal of the American experiment) in stark relief. Just after the election, President Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove suggested that it was Bill Cosby’s The Cosby Show, a hit television show that aired from 1984 to 1992, that really paved the way for the election of Barack Obama, since it presented a “normal” African American nuclear family and Americans became more comfortable, according to Rove, with African Americans within society and holding positions of leadership. This assertion, referred to as “the 97 98 Lilly J. Goren Huxtable effect,” was a misinterpretation of a theory proposed by cultural scholar Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, who noted in discussing this idea about The Cosby Show “that the social norms of a population are generally formed through its popular culture.”2 She also explained the political and cultural theory in terms of the foundation that must be laid for social change to take root and grow: “This pattern of political change echoing cultural change happens across the world, in every culture. It adheres to the concept in social sciences that in order for the status quo to actually change in a society, many sectors of the public must coalesce around that change. Popular culture and entertainment tend to be the most effective tools for changing public perception.”3 Popular culture and entertainment do provide effective and broad-reaching tools for changing the way a society conceives of ideas, individuals, groups, and culture. Numerous examplescanbeidentifiedinthisregard,aswehaveseendramaticshiftsinpublic attitudes in the United States toward gays and lesbians as positive presentations of gay and lesbian characters in movies and on television have been integrated into mainstream entertainment through such presentations. There is much to Valdes-Rodriguez’s analysis—especially of the way African Americanscametobepresentedthroughthe1980sand1990sinpopularculture. The Huxtable effect, as presented by Valdes-Rodriguez, delineates one side of the equation of “normalizing” African Americans within American society through the multiple avenues where African Americans were integrated into mainstream culture and acknowledged in such capacities over the past thirty years. But there has been a particular and oddly interesting corresponding experience among fictional presentations of the American president, who was first presented as a black man in the 1933 film Rufus Jones for President. The reason this experience, in the presentation of African American (or other minority male) presidents, is extremely useful is that fictional female presidents have been experiencing the same trajectory as the fictional African American presidents, but with a lag time of about thirty years. This may indicate differing levels of readiness on the part of the American populace with regard to the election of a female president. In visual fiction, African American and Hispanic American men have been elected to the presidency for the past fifteen years, but in fiction, women have, until only very recently on 24, ascended to the presidency through other turns of events that—almost accidentally—landed a woman in the Oval Office. I found this conclusion, based on an exploration of who had played the president and how they had achieved that office in filmic and televisual presentations, quite curious. Oddly enough, before minority men were elected to the fictional presidency, they too had ascended to that highest office through other means. Fact or Fiction 99 This chapter examines the way in which...