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The West Wing

If you did not see last night's episode, not to worry: no spoilers here.

I did want to share a couple of quotes I found about how the viewing audience has (perhaps) changed in the years since the show debuted in 1999. Let Gloria Goodale of the Seattle Times tell it:

Some suggest that this idealized view of politics played well to audiences when "The West Wing" debuted in the go-go 1990s, but they argue that the show is no longer relevant in today's greatly changed post-9/11 world.

"In 2005, our tolerance for points of view that represent the enemy is much lower," says Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University. "Our culture has deteriorated into conflict and confrontation."

Schmidt, who has hosted a national political radio show for 16 years, feels acutely the political divide in the nation today. "I almost quit my show two weeks ago because of the level of acrimony in calls. The effort to belligerently accuse me of being a sympathizer with the enemy [has] reached a level I haven't seen in more than 16 years."

"West Wing" may never return to its former position in the popular culture, says Nancy Snow, a professor of communications. Her students at California State, Fullerton, aren't interested in watching shows that challenge their point of view, she says.

"Here's a show that you'd think could dramatize and highlight all the important issues of our day," she says, but people aren't looking for a dialogue.

"We're in a period in general of not wanting to reach across the aisle," Snow says. "We're in a very different America now than just six years ago, and I don't see how it could possibly go back to where it was."

But here's the thing: characters like Josh Lyman and Toby Ziegler never really sang Kumbaya with their Republican counterparts all those years. They were rough, sometimes arrogant partisans who fiercely believed in the party line, even turning against their own, whipping the wayward Congressman back into line when need be.

Josh Lyman, "going gazebo:"

Do you have any idea how much noise Air Force One makes when it lands in Eau Claire, Wisconsin?

We’re going to have a party, Congressman. You should come, it’s gonna be great.

And when the watermelon’s done, right in town square, right in the band gazebo... You guys got a band gazebo? Doesn’t matter, we’ll build one. Right in the band gazebo, that’s where the President is going to drape his arm around the shoulder of some assistant DA we like.

And you should have your camera with you. You should get a picture of that. ‘Cause that’s gonna be the moment you’re finished in Democratic politics.

President Bartlet’s a good man. He’s got a good heart. He doesn’t hold a grudge.

That’s what he pays me for.

But they were about more than just bullying. They were partisans, but with a purpose. I think that's what the show was about: finding and expressing the higher ideals that drove them to do what they did.

Mario Cuomo famously said that "you campaign in poetry and govern in prose." Well, guys like Toby knew how to govern in poetry as well:

We're running away from ourselves. And I know we can score points that way, I was a principal architect of that campaign strategy... But we're here now.

Tomorrow night we do an immense thing. We have to say what we feel. That government no matter what its failures in the past, and in times to come, for that matter, government can be a place where people come together. And where no one gets left behind. No one gets left behind. An instrument of good.

I have no trouble understanding why the line tested well... But I don't think that means we should say it. I think that means we should change it."

I don't know. Maybe people don't care about that stuff anymore. Maybe the critics think the show has lost its edge, is no longer relevant. But The West Wing on a bad night is still better than just about anything else on prime-time network television.

"I'm just saying."

P.S. I couldn't resist including this:

WWpoll.GIF

I voted for the "Toby/Vet funeral" episode, although I've always liked the one where Abby told Leo about Jed's MS, Jed asks Toby to tell him that Jerry Springer fans "don't actually vote do they?," Toby convinces Jed to cut the line "the era of big government is over" and Jed leaves the Deputy Undersecretary of Mines in the Oval Office to pick up the pieces of the government should terrorists bomb the Capitol during the SOTU speech.

Bartlet: "Do you have a best friend?"
Roger Tribbey: "Yes, sir."
Bartlet: "Is he smarter than you?"
Tribbey: "Yes, sir."
Bartlet: "Would you trust him with your life?"
Tribbey: "Yes, sir."
Bartlet: "Then that's your Chief of Staff."

OK, OK, enough for now....


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