The Drive to Rewrite History
Everyone’s favorite intern of the last twenty years is having her story retold by co-producer Ryan Murphy and the FX Network for a new audience who were too young to remember the actual events as they occurred.
Impeachment: American Crime Story, is set to premiere as an unwelcome “October Surprise” on September 27, 2020, on the FX Network, home of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and not much else lately. No, wait, that show is on FXX.
Nevermind.
The on-again, off-again series continues, brought to you by the same, even-handed and clear-eyed pseudo-documentarians who brought us the sensationalized, rewritten history of the O.J. Simpson trial and the events that brought together Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace.
According to FX, the series will focus on the various perspectives of a trio of female leads: “Impeachment: American Crime Story unravels the national scandal that swept up Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and Linda Tripp as principal characters in the country’s first impeachment proceedings in over a century.”
As would be expected in the entertainment, cultural, and political world of 2019, the show’s announcement has set members of Twitter’s blue checkmark brigade running to their mobile devices to castigate the premise of the show, the producers of the show, and anyone who would watch the show, as part of an evil, ongoing conspiracy to attempt to re-elect the current president, by examining the Presidential behavior of his previous electoral adversary’s husband.
However, the blue checkmark people need not worry, with Ryan Murphy, the famous intern, and FX at the helm, the show will undeniably be focused on the evil of Kenneth Starr, the “pointlessness” of Whitewater, and, of course, the blinkered and money-motivated Linda Tripp and Paula Jones.
The show, as described by FX’s chairman John Landgraf is:
“This franchise re-examines some of the most complicated, polarizing stories in recent history in a way that is relevant, nuanced and entertaining. Impeachment: American Crime Story will likewise explore the overlooked dimensions of the women who found themselves caught up in the scandal and political war that cast a long shadow over the Clinton presidency.”
Because the show will have nothing to do with critiquing our current cultural/political/social moment around #MeToo, the Russians, the collapsed inquiry into meddling in the 2016 election by Robert Mueller, or anything that has subsequently occurred to the only other Clinton to ever run for office, I’m sure that Ryan Murphy — he of the completely unbiased The Politician on Netflix — will treat the material he is co-producing with an even hand.
I’m sure.
But just in case we’re wrong, here’s a word from that famous former intern, now one of the blue checkmark people herself, about this:
