My dirty little secret? I've been binge watching
The West Wing
I miss Jed, Leo, Josh, Toby, Sam and CJ...I miss seeing people working in government who care and try to do the best they can even while occasionally failing–hey nobody's perfect.
I get West Wing on Netflix so it's easy to stream the episodes...I'm about 1/2 through the 2nd season so I have 4.5 seasons left...
The really interesting thing is the way the show is produced by Aaron Sorkin has such a high degree of authenticity...I don't know for the fact that West Wing is an accurate representation of any real White House, but it's was modeled loosely after Bill Clinton's–the series started in the fall of 1999 and ran through May 2006.
The Guardian did an article last year noting the 10 year period since the West Wing finale...
Ten years on from the West Wing finale, the show's shadow still looms larget’s strange to think that 10 years ago today The West Wing, one of the most legendary and highly praised shows in recent memory, aired its final episode. That oddness isn’t because it makes us all feel old or because we’ve slipped into some crazy wormhole where time speeds up, but because The West Wing is possibly the first show to never entirely go away.
The show debuted in September 1999, when there was still a Democratic president in office and the dotcom bubble had yet to burst. It’s crazy to think that the show that defined politics for many people in the 2000s actually straddled the world-changing events of September 11. But even more important to The West Wing’s legacy is how technology changed over that time. Plenty of people jumped on the West Wing bandwagon after it won its first Emmy, surging the audience from about 9 million viewers to its peak of 17 million. That jump was aided in part by DVD sets for TV shows, which were just coming into vogue and definitely aren’t now.
--snip--
Thanks to Netflix, shows such as The West Wing and Friends are stuck in this strange nostalgia feedback loop, with old fans wanting to revisit a certain time and novices wishing they were in that time even though they missed it the first time around.
This is especially odd for The West Wing, which was embroiled in current events when it aired but also presenting the sort of government that many viewers wish we had when it was airing in the depths of the Bush administration. Jed Bartlet and his acolytes were always more progressive, more intelligent and much more fair than what Democrats at the time were experiencing in real life. Thanks to creator Aaron Sorkin, it was government as liberal fantasy, one where our politicians could hold positions that were untenable in real life.
The world eventually caught up to The West Wing, and the show presaged many of the changes that we would see in just a few years time. Bartlet appointed the supreme court’s first Latino justice in 1999, something that Barack Obama did nine years later when he appointed Sonia Sotomayor. The show’s first season included a storyline about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1999, which took 11 years for Obama to repeal. Osama bin Laden was even a suspect in President Bartlet’s shooting two years before he would claim responsibility for 9/11.
There have been a host of other ongoing political issues that we first heard about on The West Wing: government shutdowns, the rise of filibusters, journalists being kidnapped, and the constant debate over the debt ceiling. However, there is nothing more prescient than the show’s final season where Matthew Santos, the country’s first president of color, assumes office. The character should remind viewers of Obama because he was actually based on the then little-known senator from Illinois.
That’s why The West Wing has really never gone away, because it is as much about the world we live in now as it is about the world as it was then. In fact, it might be even more relevant today than it was 10 years ago.
Interestingly (something I either never heard about or forgot) some members of the West Wing cast actually hit the road last year for Hillary...
'West Wing' cast hits real campaign trail for ClintonSix cast members from the hit TV show, The West Wing, will campaign for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Ohio this weekend.
"Toby, C.J., Josh, Charlie, Will and Kate (a.k.a., actors Richard Schiff, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina and Mary McCormack) will participate in grassroots organizing events across Ohio," the Clinton campaign said in statement "The actors will discuss why they are supporting Clinton and urge Ohioans to register to vote."
I guess it was just an Ohio thing...sadly, it didn't work :~(
But I'll tell you one thing, I would trade President Josiah Bartlet for
The Big Orange Dummy™ in a heartbeat! Maybe somebody should send some DVDs to Trump and his staff for clues on how to run a White House? Yeah, I know, if t ain't Fox and Friends he likely wouldn't understand the show.
