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Official portrait of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, photographed January 11, 2019 in the Office of the Speaker in the United States Capitol.

By: Ken Hamilton

As I read through the profiles and saw the images of the Democrats running for the presidency of the United States, I couldn’t help but to notice a resemblance between them and the 1964-1967 television series about a shipwreck and the lost several castaways on a tropical isle.

 Like the actually short-lived sitcom, though having a very long afterlife in reruns, Gilligan’s Island was about several people, all with different characters, who were on a 3-hour tour that was shipwrecked on a tropical island and they waited for some outside force to rescue them.

 All of the characters that appeared on the series were there; but for some reason, the youngest of the crew, 38-year old Pete Buttigieg (as vogue.com cites him – “… the Gay Millennial Mayor the Democrats Didn’t See Coming… [hic]”) reminds me of Bob Denver’s role as Gilligan, if Gilligan was born in 1982 instead of 46-years earlier. Mayor Pete’s “out of the societal norm” character can be found in both of Denver’s most famous characterizations of Gilligan and in the 1959-1963 The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis where he played a counter-culture beatnik named Maynard G. Krebs. While heavily criticized for his inexperience as only having been a mayor of a medium-sized city, ironically, medium-sized cities is what America is; likewise, Buttigieg is what millennial America is likely to become.

 I suppose that the Skipper would be ole’ Joe Biden, whom held the helm when the Minnow, er, the Donkey ran aground on the uncharted desert isles of Iowa and New Hampshire where, as it turns out, Gilligan, er, Buttigieg was the star of the show!

 Whereas Gilligan’s Island had a single millionaire, Pelosi’s Island has two billionaires – Tom Steyer and Michael Blomberg (so much of the DEMS being the party of the poor?).

 As for the characters of the billionaire’s wives? Well there’s Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

 Sen. Bernie Sanders would likely be the high school science teacher character of the Professor, who thinks up the most bizarre solutions to their problems; and each solution, though profound, still leaves them lost on the island.

 As for Maryann and Ginger, I suppose that 38-year old Tulsi Gabbard would be Mary Ann, and NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand as her understudy. But, hands-down, the 55-year-old drop-dead gorgeous Sen. Kamala Harris would play the Ginger role, with 67-year old Marianne Williamson being her understudy.

 As it was in the original series, there were those who played the minor roles; the one-on characters and extras who appeared on the island, but despite the main characters’ best efforts, the one-ons and extras did find their way off. There were Bennet, Booker, Bullock, DeBlasio, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Moulton, Ojeda, O’Rourke, Ryan, Sestak, and Swalwell – poof, gone and forgotten.

 But, as the 1st year of Gilligan’s Island was filmed in black and white, and as it was in movies and television series of those days, where characters disappeared for dramatic effects, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Wayne Messam, Deval Patrick and Andrew Yang were among the first to be dropped.  The minorities are usually the 1st to go; which should be surprising in Democratic circles; the circles like Iowa and New Hampshire, from where former black-and-white President Barak Obama was juiced up to win – and win big! It all makes me wonder about the Skippers, er, Biden’s exuberance in getting to South Carolina where two-thirds of all Democrats are black, and as he put it, the most loyal of the Democratic base (despite no black candidates). Nonetheless, it appears that the Skipper, er, Biden has shipwrecked his black SC base as well, as half of them has abandoned him.

 But, as it was with NYS State Senator Antoine Thompson in his crushing loss for reelection — because of his vote for gay marriage, the normally left-wing black Christian voters who were against such marriages abandoned him and he lost – so I wonder how South Carolina bodes for Gilligan, er Buttigieg, whose voters who are most likely to come out to vote are like the ones that caused Thompson’s loss, and may actually vote much differently than the white Democrats who pushed Obama. 

 Stay tuned for next week’s Gilligan’s, er, Pelosi’s Island.

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