September 26, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Jesse Walker doesn't like the
Jesse Walker doesn't like the West Wing. Neither do I.
Not because it's left wing. So is pretty much every show on television, and I do watch the idiot box occasionally, and enjoy it. It's a pleasant addition to my needlepointing.
Walker hates the writing, specifically the dialogue. I hate the plot. Or perhaps a better word is the style: Sermon With A Cast.
The West Wing is Touched By An Angel for the political class. Sorkin takes the most burning issues of our day and reduces them to the kind of saccharin morals we spoon-feed fourth graders in their social studies texts. "Killing is bad." "Racism is bad." "People need help sometimes, especially if they vote Democratic." What grates on me is that Sorkin just can't bear to ever, ever give his ideological opponents a good argument, lest The Proles be misled into thinking their are actually two sides to an issue, and thus risk making a bad decision at the polls next year. Okay, I already read the Democratic position papers. The words don't suddenly vibrate with new meaning because they issue from the mouth of Rob Lowe.
The first episode I ever saw is emblematic: Bartlett takes on a woman who is clearly a doppelganger for Dr. Laura. In this scene, he just blows her away by citing all sorts of laws from Deuteronomy about various ritual sacrifices and such, which reduces her to incoherence as she attempts to explain why the laws on homosexuality apply, but the laws on sacrificing two white doves at the temple do not.
Nowhere does Sorkin reveal his native prejudices more clearly. I have heard such hilarious questioning from any number of liberals in my time, always posed to other people who are equally ignorant about any theology more complicated than the kind that comes in little books that come pre-packaged with crystals and incense sticks. The Jews have been debating these sorts of things for 5,000. The Catholics have been at it for 2,000. The fundamentalists have been giving it a good go for at least several hundred. Yet Sorkin & friends, to whom it would never actually occur to, y'know, ask someone, think that they have discovered a whole new set of questions that those ignorant rubes with the bibles were too filled with hate to even think of. Memo to Aaron: If a president had ever, ever directed that sort of inquisition to an Orthodox Jew in front of the press, what we would have seen was not His Triumphant Victory over the Narrowminded Religious Zealots, but the Presidential Ass Getting Handed to The President On a Plate, as she whipped out the eight zillion pages of talmudic debate concerning the very issues he'd brought up. But, of course, we don't actually want the opposition to be people; only cartoon villains can play opposite Superman.
Contrast this with Law and Order, which breaks liberal, but always, always makes sure that both sides have good arguments to make. Ultimately, conflicts don't always get resolved; sometimes, you have to make a judgement call between two competing values, and get an answer that truly satisfies no one. There's good reason it's the longest-running show on television.
But Gawd, it wouldn't be any less tiresome if it were libertarian. Less realistic, and there would be, no doubt, funny Pot Smoking in the Lincoln Bedroom scenes to leaven the dullness. But if it were libertarian, and still took the same smugly ignorant approach to opposing arguments, you'd find me in my living room hurling my needlepoint scissors at the television and screaming "Not all opponents of drug legalization are evil hypocrites, you evil hypocrites!"
But I digress.
It wouldn't be that hard to do a really good, still left-leaning show; get some Republicans, intelligent ones, and have them write the dialogue for the opposition. Let the opposition win once in a while. Any senior Creative Writing major ought to be able to tell you that any book where the hero never loses quickly gets tiresome.
But you know how those fundamentalists are. Can't risk letting anyone think for themselves; after all, they might get the wrong answer.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 26, 2002 3:03 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links