Will Barack Obama Be America's Next Great Black President?

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:30:00 GMT

You know how there’s usually nothing good on TV, and then finally there are TWO shows you want to watch and they’re both on at the same time? That’s what this election has been like for me. After a a lifetime of troubled Democratic administrations and doomed Democratic candidates from McGovern to Kerry (and don’t even get me started on the disastrous Gore/Lieberman campaign, Nader haters), we finally get two really strong contenders...IN THE SAME FREAKIN’ ELECTION YEAR. And they just spent the past few months beating the shit out of each other.

But that's all behind us now: according to media scuttlebutt, Hillary will officially concede the Democratic nomination on Saturday and become America’s #1 Obama Girl, while Barack moves one step closer to becoming our nation’s first real black president, after many years of fake black presidents on TV and the big screen.

And so, in honor of Senator Barack Obama’s historic achievement, Screengrab decided to look back at some of the African Americans who occupied the Oval Office in fiction before reality finally caught up:

Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck in Deep Impact (1998)

After playing God in Bruce & Evan Almighty, President of the United States was actually a step down for Morgan Freeman...but America was lucky to have his wisdom, authority and soothing, inspirational baritone during a crisis involving a potential Extinction Level Event, a.k.a. a giant comet on a collision course with Earth. Rather than farming out the whole thing to Haliburton, President Beck freezes wages and prices to prevent an economic disaster and dispatches Robert Duvall’s Capt. Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner and a multinational crew of astronauts, who sacrifice themselves to destroy the big rock, thus saving (most of) humanity. Heckuva job, Fishie.

Dennis Haysbert as President David Palmer on 24 (2002-2004)

After surviving assassins in a truly harrowing California primary, Haysbert’s resilient, basso profundo commander-in-chief is faced with nuclear and biological terrorism, as well as attempts by corrupt American businessmen to manufacture war in the Middle East in order to drive up oil prices and...uh...hey, isn’t this a Fox show with a big conservative fan base? Must be all the torture...so much torture, in fact, that West Point Academy worried cadets were starting to view such behavior as acceptable interrogation procedure, and I’ve personally heard talk radio guys condone extreme neo-con interrogation policies because, heck, they always work for Jack Bauer. Yet isn’t it also possible, given the show’s impact, that Haysbert’s performance as the indomitable President Palmer in some way helped Middle America get used to the idea of a handsome young African American Democrat in the White House?

Bill Clinton as President Bill Clinton in Contact (1998)

While not technically African American, Bill Clinton received an honorary designation as the nation’s first black president (until the real thing comes along) from a plurality of U.S. comedians. And while not technically a cast member of Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Carl Sagan’s tale of Earth’s first contact with extraterrestrial life, Clinton nevertheless received more screen time than Rob Lowe or Angela Bassett thanks to a presidential speech about rocks found on Mars that was repurposed (controversially) as a fictional proclamation about alien transmissions received by astronomer Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster). Ironically, the only reason Clinton got to portray the president in the movie was because Sidney Poitier passed on the role.

Terry Crews as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in Idiocracy (2006)

Of course, some presidents are better than others, though given the average IQ of the dumbed-down populace of Mike Judge’s little-seen, depressingly spot-on social satire, Idiocracy, Crews’ President Camacho doesn’t really do that bad a job. Sure, he almost executes the smartest man in the world (Luke Wilson’s cryogenically-preserved average Joe, whose 21st century common sense reads as genius in 2505 America). But he does have leadership skills, and when Joe’s brilliant plan to water crops with, y’know, water instead of corporate sports beverages helps to end a crippling food shortage, Camacho has the wisdom to actually listen to expert opinion rather than (ahem) stubbornly staying the course.

Tommy “Tiny” Lister as President Lindberg in The Fifth Element (1997)

Forget the Axis of Evil...Lister’s science-fictional administration has to deal with The Great Evil, a sentient flaming asteroid intent on, yes, wiping out all life on Earth. While Bruce Willis’ cab driver and Milla Jovovich’s supernatural supermodel do most of the heavy lifting in the fight against Evil (and its chief henchman Zorg, played by Gary Oldman in a peculiar plastic hat), President Lindberg nevertheless doesn’t ask and Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rhod doesn’t tell when his ultra-flamboyant radio host joins the mission, and the intergalactic commander-in-chief even supports his troops by preventing a naggy mother from cock-blocking Willis’ eventual clone chamber tryst with Jovovich...talk about advocating stem cell research!

Ken Russell’s Hospital Bed Film Festival

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

While Googling Ken Russell today (I had my reasons), I learned that the director of such cinematic oddities as Lisztomania and The Lair of the White Worm is keeping busy writing a weekly column for The Times of London. It turns out that Mr. Russell has much in common with your pals at the Screengrab; for one thing, he likes to make lists. And as you might expect, these lists often contain some eccentric and unexpected choices. For example, in his column on his top ten favorite movie characters, he includes the “glamorous, vulnerable and ‘totally cutting-edge’ duo Romy and Michele, played by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, those inseparable flatmates bound for their high-school reunion with exaggerated resumés and loveable optimism. No, I haven’t miscounted. It’s a tribute to their ability to complement each other’s performance that their double act in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) makes them unforgettably one.”

In his latest column, Russell reports: “I have just returned from that hospice of fun, the hospital, with a new knee - and this time I went in well-prepared with DVDs.” What strange and wondrous visions did the Altered States director choose for his convalescence? Well, Groundhog Day for starters, the title of which Russell explains to his British audience as “a peculiarly American festival, in which legend has it that if a groundhog (a cross between a giant squirrel and a skunk) catches sight of its own shadow on February 2, then six weeks of winter will follow - and they always do and it always does.” This selection makes sense when Russell explains it: “And isn't every day a Groundhog Day in hospital?”

Russell’s other choices range from Cocteau’s Orphee to Evan Almighty, but the most perverse just might be Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, about “a Danish hospital built on tainted ground, where the ghosts mingle with bewildered patients and eccentric doctors, one of whom is so enthusiastic about his work that he performs a liver transplant on himself.” This is a little like picking United 93 as your in-flight movie…and we wouldn’t put that past Russell, either.

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Will Barack Obama Be America's Next Great Black President?

Ken Russell’s Hospital Bed Film Festival