A Woman in the White House -- For 24 Hours

By Lisa de Moraes
Saturday, July 21, 2007; C01

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 20

Cherry Jones has been cast as the next president of the United States on the upcoming season of "24," Fox's popular counterterrorism show.

Jones had a smallish part in "Ocean's Twelve"; on NBC's White House drama "The West Wing," she played a Republican congresswoman who starts a campaign against federal funding of projects dealing with sexual diseases.

But the 50-year-old performer's true calling card is as one of the foremost stage actresses in America. She won her second Tony Award for her Broadway role in "Doubt," as Sister Aloysius, an autocratic nun who runs a Catholic school in the '60s and takes on a priest who she believes is sexually molesting a student.

News of Jones's "24" role first surfaced late Friday in trade paper reports. In another sign of how preposterous the presidential race already has become, with more than 470 days to go, the Hollywood Reporter speculated the decision to cast Jones adds "another wrinkle" to the campaign, in which Sen. Hillary Clinton is polling at the front of the Democratic pack.

Which you want to write off as ridiculous, except that earlier this year the U.S. Military Academy at West Point confirmed to New Yorker magazine that Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan had traveled to California to tell producers of "24" that its torture scenes were a bad influence on U.S. troops. He even suggested they do an episode in which torture backfires.

The show, co-created by Joel Surnow, a guy who describes himself as a "right-wing nut," is so important to the current administration that last year our country's top homeland security official took time out from dealing with the unabated threat of terrorism to attend a forum about "24."

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We got it when a television critic condemned as "depraved" the CW's new drama series "Gossip Girl" during Summer TV Press Tour 2007. The show is from Josh Schwartz and looks suspiciously like his "The O.C." pilot -- except, he assures critics, Upper East Side underage drinkers in "Gossip Girl" have sooooooo much money that the yearly income of the Cohens in "O.C." is their lunch money. And then there's the whole date-rape thing -- you know, rich guy jumps poor girl at fabulous party, poor girl text-messages brother, who rescues her in the nick of time.

But we have to admit we were shocked when critics lit into "Aliens in America" on Friday.

The series -- at least the pilot -- is a wonderful little "Freaks and Geeks"-ish comedy about a high school nerd who is so bullied by the "popular kids" that his well-meaning mother decides to get him a friend in the form of an exchange student.

Only the exchange student turns out to be a personable Pakistani Muslim, who also is treated like a freak by the other students and at least one teacher, and Mom decides to send him back. Until, that is, she learns that both his parents died about a year earlier. She then embraces him and they all live happily, if put upon, ever after -- or, hopefully, for five seasons.

It made some critics here sick. Which just goes to show you can never tell what's on a TV critic's mind:

"I'd like to ask what is it that you interpret in the American psyche, or appetite for entertainment, that will embrace a show in which Americans are depicted as bigoted and stupid to be shown the way by a young man from the Middle East?" one critic asked.

Executive Producer David Guarascio began to prattle about "a mother who cares deeply about her son . . . realizes the error of her own prejudice . . . not an indictment of the American psyche . . . helpful for some people to sort of potentially think about their own prejudices . . . "

Scott Patterson -- that's right, the "Gilmore Girls" Luke, who in one of the saddest bits of recasting in the history of TV, replaced wonderful character actor Patrick Breen as the kid's father on "Aliens in America" because, it was explained to critics, Patterson had a "holding deal," so they had to pay him whether he was put on another show or not and, presto, he winds up playing a role for which he's given no indication in any performance to date he's well suited -- jumped in, swinging.

"I just want to say something," he said.

"I just want to say something" is never good. It usually is followed by something pretty nasty.

"I don't think this show is polarizing at all and there's no evidence of that so far in your comments." Ooh snap! -- okay, maybe not so much.

"Are there any producers from the Midwest?" someone from the mob of critics shot back. We can't actually swear there was foaming at the mouth involved, but when we say the room was electric, you know what we mean.

At this point, the producers made a big mistake:

"I'm from central Pennsylvania and I keep saying that's the Midwest," said Moses Port, thinking a little levity was called for. It was not.

"I grew up in Glendale, which is kind of the Midwest version of Southern California," said Tim Doyle. Even worse.

"Is there a mentality out here in Los Angeles that people in the Midwest are more naive? . . . The idea that there's nobody from Asia that lives in Wisconsin or at least in this small town is not the reality," a critic snapped.

"No, that is the reality, because I'm from Wisconsin" interjected Lindsey Shaw, who plays the mom.

"I wanted to play this role so desperately because I felt this was my tribe. I grew up with this. . . . I really wanted to express that small-mindedness."

Doyle, finally sensing the danger, rushed to do damage control:

"You may be drawing too much of a conclusion about the series from the pilot," he billed and cooed.

"You know, the story in the pilot is this young man's arrival in this town, so it's very natural that the fish-out-of-water aspect and people's reactions to it are going to be played up for the comedy initially. But that's not going to be the series in the long term," he continued.

"The immigration debate in this country is getting not only fierce, but kind of ugly. Are you afraid your show is going to plunge into the middle of that, not to its profit?" one critic asked rhetorically/ominously.

"He's just an exchange student -- he's not coming to take your jobs," Doyle said, finally getting tough.

"You are dealing with people . . . from a part of the world that aren't always very tolerant, you know -- the Danish cartoon thing and everything. Do you have a technical adviser to keep you from getting Salman Rushdied?" another critic said.

We'll pause here so you can reread that question.

"When we sort of talk about small-mindedness, there is a billion people in the world who practice Islam and they are really not out to get anybody," Guarascio said.

"That being said, we did have an adviser on the pilot. We happen to have a writer on our staff who is a Muslim and of Pakistani descent." But Guarascio insisted the "Muslim community" so far has reacted to the show very positively. They are very excited to see a Muslim character in a comedy, he said, and "hope to use a little humor to create a dialogue."