Bartlet4America News Archive

Fantasyland

By John Leonard
New York Magazine

There was a time when network programs were actually permitted to have points of view; TV movies argued for or against capital punishment, euthanasia, and abortion, and dramatic series addressed issues like corporate responsibility, vigilante justice, disability rights, and gun control. But that time is over; instead, from brave and edgy producers, we get plunging necklines and fellatio jokes. There are many reasons why The West Wing is no longer must-see TV in my house: With Aaron Sorkin gone, it’s become a half-speed hobbling from obvious pillar to predictable post, with long walks, slow reaction shots, repetitious flashbacks, underlined signifiers, and so much posing for postage stamps you’d think the Bartlett administration had done something, anything, except compromise and pretend to feel bad about it.

But what we are getting from The West Wing is exactly what the network thought the country wanted, after complaints all last year about the liberal sermonizing. By all means, let there be no liberal sermonizing anywhere on television, and never mind that more Americans voted in the last election for Al Gore than for George Bush, and that almost none of us bargained for a repeal of the twentieth century. No, sir. C.J. can be counted on to lose every argument of principle in the new West Wing, and Mary-Louise Parker has yet this season to say anything remotely feminist, and the best line in more than a month of Wednesdays on a program that used to be about social and economic justice instead made license-plate fun of Wisconsin cheese: Live Brie or Die. For shame.