Calista Flockheart, formerly of "Ally McBeal", will be playing a conservative TV pundit in an upcoming new series on ABC.

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, "She's not Ann Coulter. She's not insane."

Writer Jon Robin Baitz added, "No, I think she's a thoughtful conservative. She's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist.

"She's not someone who is apologetic about being a conservative. But it's very, very interesting and compelling to us to try and understand this, to leave behind some of the smug presuppositions of the two coasts, . . . to look at evolving patriotism and evolving traditionalism," he said, according to an article by Dave Walker of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune.

"For years and years, the left has looked at the right in complete incomprehension and felt, 'We just can't connect.' And maybe there's an effort in the show to try and bridge that in some way.”

The left is funny even when they are not trying to be. Unable to "connect with conservatives", they've simply invented their own...a kindler, gentler conservative who isn't mean to liberals. No doubt the show hopes that liberals will come off a lot smarter than they do in an Ann Coulter tome.

Good luck with that.

Hollywood liberals keep trying to create an entertainment mythology of a strong, wise and yet compassionate liberal leadership, starting with "The American President" (...and we're going to get the guns...), finding some success in "the West Wing", and trying again with Commander-In-Chief. Clearly we aren't going to see the necessary inspiring statesmanship from guys like John Kerry (this wouldn't have happened if I was president...) and Howard Dean, so it becomes necessary to employ a little fantasy, to recall Camelot and a more hopeful time for liberals.

Its all rather pathetic.