◼ 9 Diplomatic Facts to Know About ‘Madam Secretary’ - The Daily Signal
Sunday night, CBS will debut “Madam Secretary,” a series starring Téa Leoni as a newly appointed U.S. secretary of state. To get the lowdown, The Daily Signal checked out Politico Playbook’s meet-the-cast-and-crew event Friday at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill featuring stars Leoni and Tim Daly and producers Morgan Freeman, Lori McCreary and Barbara Hall.
◼ The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia described the reforms which resulted in the Prague Spring as “socialism with a human face.” The New York Times calls Madam Secretary, CBS’s extremely expensive prime time contribution to the Hillary campaign, “Hillary with a human face.” - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page
A network series can cost between $3 and $4 million an episode. Assuming that Madam Secretary runs even one season, instead of being canceled ignominiously like Commander in Chief, the 2005 attempt at giving Hillary a human face, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.
That’s double the $46 million that Hillary’s campaign spent on TV ads against Obama and it gives the Hillary 2016 campaign over 20 hours of prime time network unpaid ad space. If the series lasts long enough to run through the whole campaign that will double to $200 million. But the Hillary 2016 campaign is expected to cost around $2 billion. CBS’s $100 million donation is only a drop in a big bucket.
There’s more than a whiff of Kim Jong-Il, Stalin and Saddam Hussein about needing so many actors to portray a current politician. But Madam Secretary reeks of political insecurity. A similar series about Obama would have been worshipful. Madam Secretary is nervously revisionist. It’s desperately trying to glue an appealing human face over the Hillary mask that Hillary Clinton wears over her real face.
