revolution in the pentagon

[intertribal]

I hate The West Wing.  Secret because I know many, many moderate Democrats who worship the show, including my cousins, who forced us to watch its Christmas episode.  I think it involved homeless people and coats or something.  I'm actually going to make a numerical list for this one, because it's not a holistic philosophical thing. The West Wing is just bad.

1. It's factually incorrect. One episode featured some blonde chickie freaking out over voting for the wrong person on her Wisconsin absentee ballot (she failed to vote for her boss, the President) and getting some honorable army guy to change his own vote in Washington D.C. to compensate.  Because apparently there is no electoral college in The West Wing.
2. It's boring as fuck.  It gives politics a bad name, it's so boring as fuck. 
3. It's way too self-congratulating.  There is no self-awareness and thus no self-criticism.  You know, the way Family Guy bashes everyone other than the characters who represent the writers of the show - in contrast to shows like The Simpsons and King of the Hill, which pokes loving fun at its own protagonists.  When the President won re-election they actually played the triumphant we-will-not-go-quietly-into-the-night music from Independence Day.  Really. 
4. It trivializes almost every issue by oversimplifying it into a neat little pamphlet-shaped Public Service Announcement.  Especially anything involving a foreign country. 
5. I hate all the characters.  Because they're boring.  A lot of people find them likable but I feel like they're unreal and pretentious, unlike anyone I can imagine existing in real life.  If they have any flaws, I don't remember them.  They're like the perfect administration for all the smug Midwestern liberals who love Garrison Keillor.  And we all know my feelings on Garrison Keillor.  I mean, compare The West Wing to W.  In spite of my politics, I would actually rather be a staffer for the Bush White House than the Bartlet White House. 
6. It's the wrong way to get people into public service.  Apparently that was Aaron Sorkin's goal.  But really?  I think you get people into public service by making them care about the world, not by luring them with the prospect of being prestigious and cool. 
7. It's Liberalism.  And I don't mean it's liberal as American politics defines it.  I mean, it is, but what I mean is, it's Liberalism.  And I hate that idealistic, excuse-for-colonialism, self-righteous, Ethical-Policy, Europe-ensconced-in-a-golden-halo bullshit.  

Here's some other people who hate The West Wing:
Gene Healy: Has there ever been a sweller bunch of folks than Toby, Sam, Donna, Josh and C.J.? A more selfless, high-minded, public-spirited, fundamentally decent pack of, er, political operators? Where in the world did Aaron Sorkin get his ideas about how politics works?  The West Wing was, above all, a Valentine to power. And despite the snappy repartee and the often-witty scripts, it was a profoundly silly show. It managed — in 21st century America — to be markedly less cynical than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Martin Barna: Every plotline in Wing has been done a dozen times by a dozen shows (usually it's a sort of president-themed Law and Order, but without the wit and the intensity of Sam Waterston or Jerry Orbach).  Wing isn't terrible, just disappointing. While The Sopranos makes you sit on the edge of your chair and Showtime's upcoming Queer as Folk promises to push the envelope right out of the closet, it would seem that a show about the most important institution of them all could be a bit more edgy and a bit less light.
Bryan Alexander: There's no real dialogue between forces, no real argument. The preaching is steady, never seriously argued....West Wing doesn't really allow any other views to appear as legit. This makes it easy on the brain. The entire staff is drawn from the Northeast and the West Coast, probably without modern precedent.  But Sorkin hates the South, and doesn't seem to realize the plains exist. Hence the Evil Racist Assassins being Southerners -- and arrested at a restaurant called "Dixie Pig" or something. This feeds into a lot of easy regionalism.
Jesse Walker: Few people can write dialogue with tricky, "literary" rhythms that nonetheless is credible as a conversation; the living writer who's probably best at it is David Mamet. Sorkin tries to pull this off, and he fails miserably: the accents are in the wrong places, the repartee sounds forced, and everything is way too self-conscious. When I'm watching a Sorkin-scripted movie or TV show, it doesn't matter what's on the screen: All I can see is our smug auteur pounding away at his word processor, periodically yelping, "I'm writing!" to the ceiling.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

not expressing a viewpoint (yet, anyway), but what's your opinion on Liberalism (other than that it's "bullshit")?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i should say, why do you think it's bullshit?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Um... well, mostly I know modern Liberalism, which says, we should spread our liberal-democratic values, not through war, but by withholding/giving aid and money, usually. It's one of the IR explanations that I'm disagreeing with in my thesis as an explanation for the U.S. relationship with Indonesia. What's odd about that type of liberalism is that it's basically realism with a moral highground - the good liberal country is the strong country, the bad illiberal country is the weak country and is actually expected to respond to realist incentives - aid, money - and change its mind for realist reasons.

And I know liberalism from the 18th century, but that one not as well and only as it applies to colonialism. Liberal nationalism imposed by Napoleon resulted in blowback in the form of cultural nationalism, which led eventually to Nazism. In the colonies liberal ideas were used to justify colonialism - it was needed to bring the not yet developed native people up to the European par, the way adults need to hold the hand of a child. So they'd hold up all these parameters for citizenship that male natives could supposedly reach and then gain citizenship, but it was pretty much impossible because "being a rational person" basically meant "being a European" in cultural terms - since European culture was the highest culture.

I don't remember much about what I read of it in Political Theory. I know I was bored by Locke, and even though I thought it was better/more positive than Hobbes (although I thought Hobbes vaguely more likely to be right), I was much more sold by Machiavelli and Rousseau.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i was just curious, 'cause i clicked on the link, and it was like liberalism's about "individual rights and equality of opportunity," and i was like, i don't know what's so bad about that.

yeah, i do think that's [what you describe of modern liberalism] a shit way of doing things. i've actually thought that since like seventh grade, lol, albeit in a much more simplistic way. i found out about aid and embargoes and shit and was like appalled. i remember because i wrote silly journal entries about it. omg was clinton still in office then? he was. jesus.

but are those things a problem with the ideas of liberalism as a political philosophy, or as it became allied with nationalism and european sentiments? because it seems like if you're really upholding individual rights and equal opportunity, it would be against your philosophy to 'bring the not yet developed native people up to the European par'. i dunno. but from a glance at the page it seems like people have very different ideas about what liberalism means in terms of policy.

i liked Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but i haven't read any of his political work (though it shows through, it's not explicit in his other stuff). and i haven't read Hobbes and Machiavelli since 9/10 english. i liked Rousseau, but i'd like to know more.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't know, if that's a problem with liberalism as a philosophy or it's sort of... bad things that happened to liberalism later. There was one reading that suggested it was endemic to liberalism because of some shit that I don't remember... something about how it needs to define the civilized against the uncivilized, so there need to be uncivilized people... or something. It's by someone named Mehta.

I honestly don't know, though. I have the feeling that it's not a problem with liberalism as it originated, but liberalism as it became. I don't know, I don't think most philosophies start out meaning to do harm. Even cultural nationalism, that was just trying to hold onto some sense of national identity in the face of invasion, and then it got all racist.

Rousseau apparently had his own problems with primitivism and shit. Oh well. At least he wasn't advocating colonizing people.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

and "yet, anyway" doesn't mean i'm planning any secret attacks or anything. i'm just curious.