Roof Falls in on Aaron Sorkin-'Bachelorette' Trounces West Wing Ratings Again

The Drudge Report and Fast Market Major City Overnight Nielsons ^ | January 9, 2003 | Matt Drudge

[ewing]

CBS LIVE 'STAR SEARCH' [9.4 RATING/14 SHARE OF ALL TV'S] WINS HOUR.

ABC'S 'BACHELORETTE' [11.6/17] WINS VAUNTED WEDNESDAY 9PM EST TIME SLOT

NBC WINS OVERALL NIGHT WITH REGULAR FARE BOOSTED BY 'LAW AND ORDER' AT 10PM EST [15.9/25] AND WEST WING [11.3/16]

DEVELOPING..

[gridlock]

The West Wing does a fair job of enunciating the Liberal point of view on things, but the Conservative point of view is always given the short shrift. Republicans are always shown as a fantasy of what Liberals must imagine Republicans to be (knuckle dragging Troglodytes, mostly). It's easy to win political arguments when you write both sides of the script.

Take last night's show. Some "Fundamentalists" wanted to fund an NIH study on remote prayer and it's effect on healing. The show took the "principled" position that this would be an un-Constitutional infringement on religious freedom. But that's just silly. Intelligent people could see that a study is not intrinsically biased one way or the other. It may show a positive linkage, or it may not. There is nothing offensive about studying that. But that whole discussion was lost in a fantasy about "taking the high road" and defending the precious First Amendment, no matter what the political cost. Not only pure BS, but pure BS that misses the point.

[Darksheare]

Yeah I know.
And they keep trying to make it a 'relevant' show.
And it's such an "Alice in Wonderland on Crack and LSD" trip that it would be almost funny if it wasn't for the fact that some people take it seriously.

[Bluntpoint]

"Well looks like somebody has a lot of sand in his vag***."

Maybe your beach just had a big fish kill wash up.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

"WEST WING"is on its way out since it no longer has relevance.

[Bluntpoint]

Did you see the promo for "Mr. Sterling" staring Josh Brolin?

He is another Sorkin like character. They even show on the promo one of his staff members on the phone speaking to another staffer and he said:

"I am working for the kind of man we always dreamed of working for."

Gee! I wonder party he will be affiliated with?

[The South Park Republican]

his vag***.

"HIS vagina"?????

Ummmmm....Oh, forget it...

[The South Park Republican]

(Weight Gain 4000 its helping me bulk up)

By the way...That one was on again the other night...Absolutely hilarious! I hope you were fortunate enough to catch it.

"I'm Buff!"

[WOSG]

Why do you feed the leftwing beast by viewing their propoganda???

[WOSG]

you are saying the show failed to even bring up a point that is obvious to any intelligent person, just because Liberal writers wanted liberals to look good and fundies to look bad.

sing of very *bad* writing IMHO. like when you see a movie where the hero does something unnatural and dumb just to 'help' the plot and you sit their going 'dont do that!' to no avail.

and funny how killing a scientific study is "pro 1st amendment".

[montag813]

She is a hottie, and it was funny when one of the guys was doing impromptu 'Riverdance' last night..

She is dogmeat. What show were you watching? Sheesh.

[Keith]

Hey...I watch JAG too, kinda to cleanse the palate. Besides, I am just a political junkie.

[Keith]

no...they got "push polling" right...I watch it with my moderate wife and liberal mother and use it to educate them both...it IS working.

[mrustow]

Sorkin got beat by 25 bodybuilders prancing around trying to date a loser from the first Bachelor show!

Let me get this straight: you're so happy that the best drama on network TV was barely beaten by the sort of absolute garbage that gives TV its bad name, that you would misprepresent the victory?

I despise Aaron Sorkin's politics, but he produces a show whose episodes are worth viewing both new and as repeats. That's what I call a redeeming quality. What is your redeeming quality?

[ewing]

I was going to ask you the same question, guess I like tiny ladies

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

I think a TON of us have decided to vote with our remote!!

We used to watch "The West Wing". But that was when they were sticking to entertaining..and not acting like they were elected officials of our government!!

Once they started to speak up against our country.. we stopped watching.

Same thing goes for "Providence". We were devout viewers.. but no longer watch it because of Farrels stance against our country. He started the Hollywierd list against the war.

It is the epitomy of hypocrisy to say we are against everything Sheen and Farrel stand for and then continue to watch them (Pay them) for tv shows.

If they had kept their political ideologies to themselves,.. they would still have us as viewers.

But, since they think they can use their popularity and shows as a platform to expouse political views that we do not share.. then the ONLY WAY WE CAN OPPOSE THOSE VIEWS,.. IS TO STOP WATCHING!!

Fregards, Vets

[ewing]

As the TV critic said above the show could really teach people about politics and represent conservatives fairly, instead Sorkin chooses to demonize republicans and fire the only conservatives writing for the show.

So faced with propoganda and a game show on at the same time, I will celebrate the fact that the public is not that dumb to buy his party line.

[mrustow]

From my favorite TV critic:

Re-Writing Reality, in TV's Parallel Universe

by Nicholas Stix

The West Wing

By far, the most ambitious reality re-write was undertaken by The West Wing, which opened last season with a multi-episode story arc about the attempted impeachment of "President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet" by the evil Republicans.

For those readers who just returned from a five-year roundtrip to Mars, a Democrat president named William Jefferson Clinton was impeached in 1999. In the course of defending himself against a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones, based on Clinton's lewd, harassing behavior as governor of Arkansas, Clinton had lied under oath, in denying having had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The perjury led directly to the impeachment trial, but compared to Clinton's other crimes and misdemeanors — e.g., Travelgate (malicious prosecution of Travel Office administrator Billy Dale); Filegate (abuse of power); conspiracy to obstruct justice and tampering with evidence immediately following the suicide of White House counsel Vince Foster; and then his sending the Air Force on a bombing raid, in order to forestall the impeachment inquiry — the impeachment's bill of particulars was comically insignificant. The sad fact is that for eight years, the White House was the operations center of a two-person crime wave.

In The West Wing, Democrat President Bartlet is cross between fantasy versions of Bill Clinton and Al Gore: A brilliant intellectual and Nobel Prize-winning economist, raconteur, razor-sharp wit, and man of action.

In the real world, when a young Bill Clinton was paid to teach constitutional law at the University of Arkansas, apparently the only job requirement was sex appeal. And that great mind Al Gore was only a C student at Harvard, in spite of receiving a "Senator's-son-bonus." Al Gore reached the pinnacle of his intellectual faculties smirking behind George Bush's back, as the latter spoke during one of their 2000 campaign debates.

The role of George W. Bush ("Florida Gov. Robert Ritchie") is played on The West Wing by James Brolin (Mr. Barbra Streisand) as a man who is not only stupid, but who glories in his stupidity. This bit of caricaturing is meant to prop up the socialist fantasy, in which Democrats are brilliant, and Republicans are not only meretricious, but morons. I have to confess having been raised on, and believed in that fantasy for most of my life. (I now believe that most politicians of both parties are meretricious morons.)

I doubt that Mr. Bush is much bothered by being depicted as a narrow-minded hick -- his political success is based on Democrats' history of underestimating him, and he would probably welcome such miscalculations, until it is time for him to retire from office in 2009.

And yet, I have not done The West Wing -- broadcast television's most brilliant, moving, entertaining show -- justice. For better or worse, West Wing-creator Aaron Sorkin is the master propagandist of our time. Sorkin thoroughly disproves the conservative canard, that you can't mix art and politics. (I too long mouthed that dogma, ignoring the fact that one of the 20th century's greatest works of art was the novel, 1984.) Powerful political art is extremely difficult and rare, but then so is all powerful art.

In The West Wing's parallel universe, Jed Bartlet's lie was in not reporting on health forms that he suffered from the early stages of multiple sclerosis. That's it. No sex in the Oval Office with interns, no groping of lady visitors, no abuse of power. Notwithstanding his decision, in the last episode of the season past to have the Saudi Arabian, er, "Qumari" defense minister assassinated in Bermuda, Jed Bartlet is a saint. Like I said, I can't do this show justice with a mere recitation of the tawdry facts.

The closest I can come to describing what it is that elevates The West Wing above mere (or bad) propaganda, is Sorkin's investment of his characters with foibles that, through the characters' ironic acknowledgement of those foibles, makes the characters all the more endearing, e.g., the pedantry of Bartlet and his aides "Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman" (Bradley Whitford) and "Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn" (Rob Lowe). And, of course, Sorkin has cast his roles exquisitely with actors who shine in them.

For an example of what makes The West Wing different, consider the opening Sorkin gives the ever-macho John Amos, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Percy "Fitz" Fitzwallace, in a dialogue with Bartlet's chief of staff, Leo McGarry (raspy, wrinkled, John Spencer), in the 2001-2002 season-ending show. Fitz deadpans, "Are you using a new shampoo, Leo? Your hair is so wavy and manageable."

Since it is leading up to a deadly earnest argument on behalf of assassinating the Saudi, er, Qumari defense minister, the surreal opening is a master stroke -- when people have something earnest or desperate to say, they often beat about the bush with irrelevancies. And the line had to be spoken by a macho character; in the hands of a typically effeminate character, it would lack all irony.

It is difficult to write on the aesthetics of particular art works. There is always a gap between theory and work. And yet, I am talking about art that purports to be based on reality, and which through suggestion, and its purveyors' ability to silence opposing views and artistic voices, is created to manipulate and change reality. Those are the tawdry facts, to which a recitation can do justice. Infinite justice.

[mrustow]

As the TV critic said above the show could really teach people about politics and represent conservatives fairly, instead Sorkin chooses to demonize republicans and fire the only conservatives writing for the show.

Entertainment shows and movies do not teach people about "the way things really are." The more people know about the topic, the more inaccuracies they'll catch, hence, the more trouble they'll have watching the production. And so, when watching a show that purports to be realistic, which says, "You don't need to suspend disbelief," the viewer needs to remind himself all the more, that he is watching a fantasy.

Sorkin wishes to idealize socialists, while demonizing conservatives; you wish for the opposite sort of propaganda. Neither of you is interested in reality.

So faced with propoganda and a game show on at the same time, I will celebrate the fact that the public is not that dumb to buy his party line.

Unless they were high at the time on tremendous quantities of drugs, people who would watch The Bachelorette instead of The West Wing (as opposed to watching nothing), are not only demonstrably morons, but may suffer from profound mental retardation. And you want to celebrate such imbeciles?

[section9]

My complaint about Sorkin is that he is intellectually lazy.

He simply chooses not to challenge his liberal assumptions, adding dollops of sanctimony and self-righteousness to his characters, and reveling in a world of liberal sainthood and conservative evil.

The previous critic was right. Sorkin could have stretched himself by introducing a "Republican" administration. Such a move would have brought new life to a show, and would have forced Sorkin to return to his earlier, more creative self.

But that would have meant thinking outside Sorkin's little box.

Now we are left with "Mr. Sterling". Egad!

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[weikel]

I'd like to see Mel Brooks( not much time left unfortunately) or perhaps Trey and Matt show what a real Dem administration is like.