You want to see a great “remake” of the 1930s classic The Women? You want to see women squabbling and clawing and fast-talking as they did in the original? Make a pot of popcorn, sit yourself down on your comfy sofa, and watch CNN…because the women are at it, the characters are just as beautiful (since the contest in this one is half politics, half Hooters), and the dialogue is infinitely better. The women? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and just add in “everywoman” in the guise of Mary Haines — Meg Ryan’s character in The Women who has just lost her high-earning husband to a working girl.

The question in the original film was: Can I get my husband back? Because he supports me and gets me the good house and the maid, and because without him, who am I? The question in the remake is: He walked out? To hell with him. I’ll make myself a great career (and I must do it in the next 90 minutes,) and I must make sure my best friend still loves me and can I trust her. And if the schnook of a husband wants to come back, well who knows? I’m making my own living now.

The question in the best version — the 2008 presidential competition — is: Can a woman hold a baby on her hip, smile beautifully into the camera, and still very possibly become the leader of the free world?

Give me the third show any time. It signals a critical time in the female revolution. It’s more vicious than mud-wrestling and the dialogue is as fast and clever as it was in the original version of The Women, and they don’t even stop (as they did in the remake) for one character to finish before the other lashes out. And acid tongue? Whew.

Now, in order to understand the current phenomenon, we need to go back a bit to the beginning of time, when the first creatures pulled out of the slime onto dry land and began to make a civilization. Or, if you are of the other persuasion, God created mankind in six days; like all men, He rested on the seventh. In order to populate the land, in order to make two creatures produce a third, we needed for the “method” to be very pleasureful, or else, if you take away the “fun factor,” what exactly is sex? …forget what I just said, because sex without pleasure is too gross to imagine.

So to fight off the saber-tooth tiger, the man had to be stronger, hunt the bear with a club, discover fire to cook it, and chop the wood to keep it going. The woman had to bear the next generation, cook the food, and clothe them all against the cold…she knew what she had to do and she did it…no problema.

Then came the washing machine, the dryer, the microwave, canned food, fast food, frozen food, diapers became disposable (if you think I’m being funny, let me take you back to my first offspring — no money, you washed shitty diapers by hand, hung them on the line, boiled the glass bottles to sterilize them…it’s a sci-fi horror)…

So women now had time to go to work. They didn’t need the man to pay the bills. She had birth control (at least it’s still available — we don’t know what will happen when the forces that now threaten to move percentage points to the right control the agenda. Nothing personal. A free election is a free election, and if the powers that be are given the right to look under the covers, that’s the name of the game).

So now, the whole world is eating popcorn and watching CNN and asking: Can this beautiful candidate bring her baby to work in the White House and still decide what to do with world trade, the energy crisis, and the loss of American power in world balance?

Mary Haines got her freedom when they invented the first pantyhose, and she didn’t have to schlep up those silk stockings to make certain that the seam at the back was straight and attach them into murderous little hooks that cut into her thighs. Or when she got that “cap” …you know…to keep the male aggressive sperm from spoiling her chance at the new job.

And what of marriage, which used to be the old pattern? Now sex before marriage is a sport because, remember, it’s fun! In the ’30s, if a guy wanted some decent sex, he forked over the marriage license. Today’s woman has said to me: Marriage? Live with a guy five or six years first. Five or six years? By then you know his bad habits, his eccentricities, you listen to him snore. Are you sure you still want to live with this guy for the rest of your life?

But let’s get back to Mary Haines in the current remake of The Women. Marriage and raising kids is no longer the issue. What happens to her insecure pre-teen when her husband walks out? She gets pierced and her hair gets wilder. Mary’s husband asks her to go into marriage counseling. Hell no. Mary is into design to make an immediate success by selling a million dresses to Saks. The really important issue: if you don’t have a really trustworthy girlfriend, what’s the use of living?

The 2008 election has suddenly slipped from issues to tissues and has become really vicious. The party of “ideas” is  stunned by the turn of events and stands blinking in the light. You’re on your living room sofa, sitting on the edge of your seat. You’ve finished the popcorn and you’ve now dug into the Haagen Daz, big-time. Hillary is smart and savvy, but they passed her up. Now the dems are beginning to wonder. The repubs found themselves a classic beauty who parades her sweet, “challenged” child in front of the camera which implies: I can breast-feed, diaper change, raise my kids, support one if she’s pregnant by marrying her off to the red-neck who supplied the sperm, and still make the decision of how to handle the balance of power in the free world.

Mary Haines, what on earth happened to you?