The new comedy with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on HBO called Veep ostensibly treats the usually absurd job of a Vice-President in a bi-partisan fashion. At least this is the premise of a review on NRO by Jim Geraghty, so I'll take that on authority. But is it really so non-partisan? Consider: this is the same network that offered Game Change a few months ago, a blisteringly critical portrait of Sarah Palin. Now they give us a comedy series about a ditzy female Vice-President? Hmmmm....
Remember, a year or more ago -- when these series would have had to be greenlighted for production planning, stars would have had to be contacted and brought under contract, use of locations would have had to be arranged, sets would have had to be designed, etc. -- Sarah Palin was a likely Presidential nominee for the Republicans. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that HBO decided that political movies and TV shows featuring Palin-like figures (either Palin herself in a docudrama or a parody of Palin in a fictional comedy) would get good ratings.
I also don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that HBO consciously planned to make a huge, under-the-table, in-kind contribution to the Obama '12 campaign by presenting shows that inevitably would serve as negative advertising against a GOP ticket headed by Palin. That's how the MSM works.
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