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#181 - West Wingin' It (w/ Briahna Joy Gray and Nathan J. Robinson) (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-27 19:54:40
Edited:
2020-11-29 20:02:55
Imported:
2024-06

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Content

Just when Luke thought he was out, they pull him back in. In another crossover event with the Current Affairs podcast, our resident West Wing expert chats with Briahna Joy Gray (National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, and co-host of the Bad Faith podcast) and Nathan J. Robinson (Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs magazine) about the high-profile 2020 West Wing reunion special. How have Aaron Sorkin's politics adapted to the new reality? Folks, take a wild guess.

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Comments

Tony Mines

It's truly amazing to me that the conversation in this episode ended up where it did, because it anticipated this comment I intended to drop some version of... I have ten years on both the Michael and Us hosts, and much of my listening experience has to do with trying to figure out the fuck I was doing for ten years to have ended up in such a synergetic place out of sequence. I've listened with interest to Luke's relationship with The West Wing (liking or being impressed with the show, then later becoming the enemy of it or realising it is your enemy) but bypassed sharing that relationship with it myself by virtue of age. I was old enough in 1999 to recognise it for the insufferable thing that it is, and only belatedly slouched my way towards watching the first season in 2009 at age 30. If you bail after the first season, by the way, every character gets murdered by a sniper in the finale. It's great! But I have a highly analogous relationship to Luke's West Wing 'thing' in my own relationship to Star Trek TNG. As the most expensive looking, and almost only sci-fi on TV at that time that wasn't Quantum Leap, twelve year old me was in love with the first two seasons almost by default. But then 13yr old me was forced to turn against the show by the revelation "wait, they're all Republicans!". Which was the language I had to articulate the idea at the time. What I was actually identifying was "wait, they're all Democrat liberals" and I spent the next four years unpackaging this idea and hate-watching the show, as it served the function like no other work of fiction, in helping me define my own political identity. I've seen every episode of TNG, but only the once, and 26 years ago, so I can't really know if adult me agrees with the thesis of teenage me? But that thesis was that the premise of the show was fundamentally flawed in a manner not unlike the West Wing. That the central dichotomy; we have this non-intervention first principle, but reality keeps rubbing up against it, is a false dichotomy for drama unless the ideology of that drama is essentially interventionist. I watched TNG every week through a lens such as Nathan describes in this episode, that the awfulness of the liberal tendency is there to be observed 'on accident'. Teenage me would definitely have told you that the much touted socialist credentials of Star Trek are a bunch of horseshit, that the claim mostly derives from that one condescendingly Sorkin-y episode where they brag to a crew of dopes from the 21st Century about how they 'outgrew' money and regional conflict - claims in no way backed up by any discernible behavioral signifiers or social relations at any other point in the show. That nothing about its much proclaimed optimism is in any way optimistic and that its driven by the same Liberal fatalism as the West Wing. He basically agreed with The Marquis, that guy. It would be interesting to find out if I still agree with him. But it would save me a lot of time spent in beige corridors if I found out vicariously through you guys...

Michael and Us
>>46745940

I have lots of thoughts on TNG, which remains one of my favourite shows! I only wish Will had seen it...

taru

Nice to hear you’re into Borgen, Luke! I binge watched it back in the day (on the Finnish public broadcasters online service, naturally) that I thought I could speak Danish. It does seem very realistic to Nordic/ European politics, and I like that they didn’t make her part or her as a politician perfectly Good People.