That scene of Martin Sheen owning that Christian lady is a microcosm of that show and its ridiculous view of reality. In reality she'd start screaming like MTG, never conceding, and the next day there'd be hundreds of articles yelling about how the President is assaulting religious freedoms.
It’s worth pointing out whenever liberals reshare that clip, they forget that the episode ends with Bartlett telling the LGBT lobbyist that he CAN’T ENDORSE PROTECTING LGBT RIGHTS because it’d be too radical and they need to work gradually. And the character agrees with Bartlett!!
If Martin Sheen was a good leader like Stalin, he’d pull out his pipe take a puff say the “nobody sits when the president stands” and then the next day she’s edited out of photos
Martin Sheen has plenty of scenes like that. He deals with some character who's written to be dumb and have nothing original to say, and he'll recite trivia or correct their grammar. And the audience is supposed to watch this and think it's really intelligent.
One thing that annoyed me about the West Wing was that the pecking order in the Bartlett Whitehouse was President, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of staff, then from there is was the communication staff, speach writers and the press secretary. It's like it was Aaron Sorkin's wet dream of a world where writers are the most poweful people in the world.
Yeah, like Toby Ziegler's literally involved in policy decisions. The fuck? Bitch, you write speeches - and not very good ones even. And it's kind of funny that in the Sorkinverse the press sec - whose job description is to basically be a professional liar - is a paragon of virtue.
Indeed, entirely performative to paper over that in substance it rings completely hollow. And out of such an empty consideration of actual values emerges that visceral inauthenticity that everyone _not_ desensitized to it by being firmly up their own ass can easily intuit and literally just _feel_ , that vague sense of genuineness that Trump was able to tap into and that, shock of all shocks, liberals _still_ can't reconcile with or even recognize really. All form devoid of content. Sheldon Wolin's description of "inverted totalitarianism" comes to mind: _"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."_ _"While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a "master race" (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the 'ideal'."_ We can do the impossible, but only to perpetuate the ordinary! Compromise for it's own sake! (tm) Maybe this is interesting, reminded too of actual nazi Carl Schmitt's self-declared "political theology" described in The Concept of the Political, which recognized and drew exactly this distinction between fascism and the unconscious "apolitical" technocrat while also recognizing their common goal of totality was indeed the inevitable logical conclusion (sort of a "clash of civilizations" thing between unconsciously political and the consciously political, "the political" being a tribal friend/enemy distinction to Schmitt, something I'd say Trump _also_ intuited pretty well, largely just by being a dipshit of course, explicitly calling out friends and enemies without any cynically calculated distance), and from this devised the nazi party's tactic of exploiting liberal capitulation to over time gain institutional power past a threshold that a full takeover can no longer be legitimately challenged. Which leads to his famous redefinition of "the sovereign" from the sort of consensus of the Hobbesian leviathan enforcer of the law to instead the entity that is able to decide the state of _exception_ to that law. Sort of tautologically true of course, but I think it reveals that level of consciousness or awareness of "the political", of power itself and its structures/divisions/tensions. This being understood by Stalin leads to the coining of the term "American exceptionalism" meant to be negative in its connotation, but as usual through that "inverted totalitarianism" cultural filter it becomes "good, actually" over time as it is processed in our cultural hegemony. We love being the only real geopolitical sovereign don't we folks? Ok I'll shut the fuck up now.
The most interesting thing about the show is it exposes Sorkin's attitude towards stakes. This is the highest office in the country where what is done has transcendent consequences for millions of people... and we never see what happens. We never see how people are impacted, if people die, if they lose their jobs or if the go hungry because of policy decisions made in that setting. We only see what happens inside the White House. All we're supposed to care about is how hard it is for the people inside to have to make tough decisions. Aside from making him an awful writer, it's fascinating in how it reveals what politics mean to Sorkin.
It's not true that the show had no ideology. It did. It was conservative. I mean, Toby is supposed to be their "lefty" but he's against Social Security and unions. Who does that sound like?
Indeed, but that's exactly what they're trying to describe I think. Their ideology is basically unconscious of itself so they think everything is "objective" and that questions of "ought" can be derived from descriptions of "is" without any application of normative values, if that makes sense. As you're saying though, of course at the bottom of it is class, regardless of if they believe their own kayfabe bullshit or not, so shocker they de facto align with the interests of the capitalist class, ie "conservative". Basically the demonic arcon of the neoliberal technocrat, their ideological conviction emerging precisely from them thinking they have no ideology guiding them, unconsciously serving the perpetuation of the values de facto inherent in the capitalist mode of production, a "business ontology" as Mark Fisher I think appropriately termed it. Sort of a conflation of the "is" and the "ought", no real "dasein" or existential consideration of values but instead a devotion toward ones already present. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape comes to mind immediately where he's basically like, "yeah, we can answer moral questions 'objectively'...with 'science'!". Sheldon Wolin's conception of "inverted totalitarianism" I think also describes this well if this is making no sense: _"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."_ Something I found fascinating is that fascist political theorists like _literal nazi_ Carl Schmitt were very aware of this distinction between the "apolitical" technocrats and what they would claim is an authentic ultranationalism, Schmitt arguing this is the essence of "the political" itself; basically a tribal friend/enemy distinction at its core (check out his self-described "political theology" The Concept of the Political for more here). Which is why I would argue in the most important ways, the nazis didn't really lose WWII but merely lost their "authentic" or conscious political essence, trading the viscerally aggressive/uncomfortable (one might say, honest/genuine) "divine right" ultranationalist aesthetic in favor of a generic "cost-effective" corporate sheen (serving "the market" gods essentially; an unconscious ideological drive to maximize "efficiency" aka capital accumulation in neoclassical/neoliberal econ), trading an explicitly racist ideological lens for one guided by that drive toward technocratic "efficiency". Or something.
Most ancient Neoliberals that gutted the unions and social security in the Clinton administration, nobody is pro union because they made them politically irrelevant a long time ago.
The misunderstanding of conservatism in America is so spot on. That's really the nail in the coffin for all the failures. Not taking an ideological stance and not accounting for the ideology of your opponent is fatal. Conservativism is and has been an ideological project, being a liberal in America is mostly about group identity.
It was an ideological project: establishing capitalism as the dominant force in America and the world. But then they won. Capitalism doesn't need defending any more.
I've just come across this clip and frankly it's shattered my poor naive heart... even if I think I secretly knew it was true the whole time. I was obsessed with the West Wing in my early 20s and for a long time daydreamed that politics could be solved with a bon mot while music swells in the background. The fact that they draw a direct line from the West Wing to Obama's foolish pandering to the Republicans (which also derived from the fantastic Team of Rivals that Obama's a noted fan of) is just so on point
I feel the exact same way. I grew up when the West Wing aired, but only recently started watching the show in earnest. It really spoke to my equally deep and foolish desire for a government composed entirely of ridiculously ethical and hyper competent technocrats. Now I can't help but see the show as a bunch of neo-liberals patting each other on the back.
Correction: Aaron Sorkin has a writing credit for all but one episode of the series for the seasons he was writing for. Seasons 5-7 had a proper writing staff afterwords led by the guy who would later do SHAMELESS on Showtime.
The Aaron Sorkin cia worshiping afghan war movie Charlie Wilson’s war. I did a deep dive on the afghan Soviet war. The stinger missile did shit. The Soviets fingered out pretty quickly how to get past it
Oh my God, that makes so much sense! The fact that the “Moneyball” method ultimately did jackshit for the Oakland A’s in the long run because bigger franchises adapted it for themselves fits so well in the Sorkin mindset. “Sure the A’s ultimately was a victim to a market-based sports economic system and play on a stadium literally leaking shit through the walls but THEY WERE BRILLIANT DAMMIT”.
I felt so alone at uni with my distaste for Sorkin and Ezra Klein. If only i found chapo before I dropped out found heavy opiates I could have felt halfway sane
35:50 It's even dumber than that. It wasn't a Senator from PA, it was a Representative from Philly and as someone who lives near and works in Philly, we couldn't give two shizballs about a test ban treaty. Literally no one has ever been voted out of office over a test ban treaty. It has never happened and is somehow even less likely to happen in Philly.
@@dergolem9444 No. Brendan was the producer who appeared on the show from time to time. He left the show to do his own thing, which is the excellent Blowback podcast with Noah Kulwin. Noah and Brendan both appear on Chapo periodically.
i’ve watched maybe one episode of the west wing. it was for a class (shocker). 11 minutes into this segment, i am beginning to realize the terrible impact this show has had on both american politics AND television. that shit about “everybody has to ALSO be a nobel prize winner and have a world record” has perpetuated itself so hard, it’s crazy EDIT: holy shit, the episode i watched was the court one
Martin Sheen isn't at all like Jed Bartlett, he's a socialist or something. And people forget that one thing that made Jed Bartlett seem so attractive to liberal viewers was that Bush was in the role of Trump at the time. It took people (some, anyway) a while to realize that, wait, for Democrats, these guys sure do sound like Republicans....
@@nataliekhanyola5669 I thought I remembered him saying something like that once, but googling doesn't find it. I do know that he's a pacifist and a long-time activist on a number of issues. In any case, I can't imagine Bartlett doing and saying the kinds of things Sheen does and says.
They should do “Charlie Wilson’s war” a liberal suck fest of the CIA and how cool and smart they are and how the stinger missile (spoiler alert by the time the stinger got to Afghanistan the Soviets were already leaving and they figured out how to defeat it quickly) defeated the Soviets.
We have Sherrod Brown in Ohio who opposes Medicare for All and endorsed Hillary over Bernie. He even campaigned with the Bartlett character when he ran for reelection.
45:00 It no big surprised that they ended the Israeli-Palestinean conflict in the last season, when one of the writers was Josh Singer, who later won the Oscar for writing Spotlight, which also has a "debate school as written by a West Wing writer" vibe.
Sorkin desperately wants to be Paddy Cheyefsky but has none of the edge, intellect, or poetic eloquence to write something like NETWORK.. he's closer to a Tarantino or other postmodern imitative type who churns out the viscera, aesthetics, and dressings of a format but seemingly lacks an understanding of why those things worked in the first place...
16:11 tbf show runners/creators get head writing credit on every show they run. Aaron is usually the show runner, and so he gets a writing credit on every episode even if a staff writer originally wrote it (however he does have to rewrite 50% of to get that credit). So technically this isn’t so much a Sorkin thing but industry standard
To me, it works as a drama. Sorkin could write an Emmy showpiece episode with "Noel" being the best example. I agree with the criticisms, but they feel off - like complaining about the awkward aspirational bullshit in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Want to talk about how Sorkin sucks then I give you "Newsroom" and, most importantly, "A Few Good Men."
West Wing is political pornography and just like with pornography, if you don't recognize it as a fantasy and not a accurate representation of real life (and or recognize what you like about the fantasy and how it could be problematic), you're going to find yourself in trouble. I still managed to find myself liking a fair but of the show after I reconciled that, but my biggest issue with the show was that it was great on a 'episode by episode' basis BUT REALLY seemed to fall flat on any serialized story telling. Any plot line they set up and would seemingly promise to pay off in later eps, would have a unsatisfactory payoff, if it even GOT that and wasn't just Deus Ex Machina'd into irrelevancy...................which now that I think about it was my primary gripe with Psych?
Thank you for the content I am a fan of the two movies and four series that I’ve seen written by Aaron Sorkin. I do not at all think the ridiculous situations that happen in any of the reflect real life. They are like any other, fantasy characters and stories. In no way do I think ESPN, the WW, SNL, or CNN should be like what goes on in my entertainment. I am confused by what I see as a contradiction, if Sorkin’s writing is so bad, how has it single-handedly ruined liberal politics for an entire generation?
It's not the show itself but what it did to people's perception of the political process and how it works. Like they said, it has all these supposedly enlightened and knowledgeable people at the helm proposing all these supposedly wonderful policies and then getting rewarded for their incredibly forward thinking ways, when in reality it has never worked and will never work like that. It's basically liberal idealism manifest into one single project
Sophomore year of college I got involved with student government. Towards the end of the year, somebody posted a pic of the West Wing cast on Facebook tagged me & other members in it. That was my last year in SGA…
Graduated just a couple years ago and I had an AP government class where the teacher played west wing once a week if not more. God bless our school system
I always thought that an interesting “double feature” that would make for great content for analysis by contrast would be “The West Wing / House of Cards” joint, because it’s night and day. It could give for a great video essay on the corrosion of Americans faith in their government - Except no video essayist or podcast want to touch House of Cards now, given the Kevin in the room, which retroactively tainted irreparably the whole thing. Which, it is what it is, but you can basically say that the Bartlett Administration gave us the Underwood Administration; HoC almost feels like a direct response to TWW and Sorkin, yet still it’s on their own little pocket for fantastical imagination: Real life Underwoods aren’t Machiavellian geniuses who are obsessed about going down on history like a contemporary Napoleon… They are all rubes of the highest magnitude who simply fall upwards by default due to their connections and membership onto the ruling class, and are so much more narcissistic that they already think they have a napoleonic legacy regardless of pursuing any realization or grand larger than life ambition. That’s why the most realistic depiction of government in media, even though British government, is still (imo) “The Thick of It/In The Loop”.
never watched house of cards, but I just recently finished suffering through all 7 seasons of West Wing, and my friend was like "alright we need to watch homeland now." In essence, Homeland is West Wing for Neocons. Since 9/11 never happened in the fictional reality of the West Wing, you'd think that Homeland is at least slightly more grounded in reality. It is absolutely not. Basically, the first season is about a normal muslim guy getting surveilled by the CIA because the (literally schizophrenic) case officer played by Claire Danes feels guilty about not preventing 9/11. Just like the west wing was liberals fantasising about a good liberal in the bush era, Homeland is for the neocons wishcasting their darkest nightmares about manchurian candidates and jihadist terrorism
What I've heard is everyone in Washington thinks they're in "House of Cards" or TWW but they're really in "Veep." Created by Armando Iannucci, who made "The Thick of It" & "In the Loop."
I still like the show but i dont like when i can tell when sorkin is just using one of the characters to just pontificate and word vomit on some hot button issue. The second time i watched the show josh lyman's rants irked me more than the first time i saw it. I do still like the show and but i saw its flaws way more the second time
anyone else like listening to the show The West Wing Thing? i thouhgt it was pretty good, then halfway through one episode josh started talking about steve bing dying and went on a massive tangential rant about how theres no possible way steve bing can be connected to epstein and youre crazy if you think there is. which is uh, very much not true - listen to the trueanon with Enty from CDAN. Weird stufff josh!
Listening to this now and hearing "debates don't matter" given what happened with Biden makes me laugh. It's a bit like motor racing, you can't win the race at turn 1 but you can lose it!
While I'll agree with the assessment that it did cultural damage and is silly liberal idealism, I think when you disconnect it from your understanding of politics in reality, it's a pretty well made show and can be entertaining
this is where i’m at with it. the politics suck, it infected people’s brains into thinking this is how things should be… buuuut it’s a pretty entertaining tv drama
Exactly, I remember seeing an interview with Sorkin that I think explains a lot. He was basically like, _"yeah, dialogue to me is like music, a point and a counterpoint,"_ etc. and it's like yeah this is literally just noise and vibes, the actual content is basically irrelevant as it's solely about the proper form. And that form can no doubt be, as you said, entertaining, sort of like a pop song you know sucks but enjoy nonetheless, but at the end of the day it is indeed just porn basically, slop for slop's sake. And we love the slop don't we folks, just tremendous, you know a lot of people are saying this, _and it's true_ , no one's ever seen slop like this, just fantastic slop, really fantastic. Also entertaining still I think (or maybe just fascinating is the better description of the root of the entertainment, in an ensorcelled by a trainwreck kind of way) _is_ actually just _not_ disconnecting it from reality, as Chapo did here obviously, just watching it through the lens of reality to better understand the -empty and performative- "post-ideological" lib-mind, watching this lib-bizarro-universe arc "bend toward justice" for no real reason whatsoever (but I guess for some rhyme, that skeletal musicality). What's that Jean-Luc Godard quote, _"any successful film is the result of a misunderstanding between the director and the audience"_ or something. So you can extract double the entertainment value from seeing that flipped on its head, a perfect overlap of the audience and the director in understanding but the distance between that and reality itself. Or something.
The first season was actually really good the characters would bicker and argue how little things that don't seem important would get blown out of proportions in the media, there are times where yes they would get a slam dunk but most of the time it was small concessions. Then yes by the last season they're somehow trying to broker peace with cuba and ending the conflict between israel and palestine, like this show became a fantasy.
Eh I'm about halfway through, these guys are too cynical and nihilistic about politics and the show, as if it had no redeeming qualities and bore no relation to reality (yet the contradict themselves when they acknowledge it forecast Obama's rise and presidency).
The obama presidency didn't play out like The West Wing, it played out like a bunch of people who believed The West Wing was realistic got elected and then proceeded to find out the truth.
First it’s a TV show. Of course they dramatize everything! If you are watching it for a realistic, factual depiction of how the West Wing works than you are delusional! The show is about the characters and the Sorkin writing style, which is also completely unrealistic! They are practically singing with the rhythm of the lines voiced by the cast. Also, Obama was a great President! He passed significant legislation that will be viewed in a more positive light as we are more years removed from his terms. The people who actually believe if Bernie won the Democratic nomination he would have won the national election are underestimating his vulnerability. A Socialist Jew from Brooklyn would scare independents and Trump would have been re-elected. Additionally even if Bernie won the Presidency, he would not be able to pass much legislation as no Republican would vote for his policies simply out of principle and some Democrats may have stayed away as their districts would have voted against them.
