well, this is timely
Philip Adams is a liberal columnist in The Weekend Australian Magazine. Usually he's either discussing a serious political issue or paying out all of the outraged conservatives who write letters to the editor about him, but I liked this week's column so much that I'm typing it up for you. Recommended for Americans and Australians alike. (I've added some Wikipedia links for the antipodeanally challenged.)
'Seems some foolish people regard The West Wing - my all-time favourite program - as a work of televisual fiction. Tsk tsk ... The West Wing is reality television, one of those fly-on-the-wall documentaries that, prior to bio-scoping Bartlet and co, examined the goings-on in the Osbourne household or that macabre ménage at Sylvania Waters.
The West Wing is 100 per cent true. The work of fiction is the Bush administration.
How could anyone imagine otherwise? Confusing the satirical nonsense swirling around President George W with the earnest realities of President Jed Bartlet? Bush is another Borat, a piece of lampoonery devised by the brilliant Sacha Baron Cohen following his success with Ali G.
God knows Baron Cohen provides clues galore. For example, his comic operandi can be seen in the way Bush tortures the English language. Even more than Ali G or Borat, he litters every sentence with malapropisms, mispronunciations and sins of syntax. Does anyone seriously suggest the American public would entrust the red button that launched 10,000 nuke missiles to a president who can't pronounce "nuclear"?
As with Borat and Ali G, George W is performed with gross exaggeration, the performance intentionally unconvincing and implausible. We're dealing with inspired miscasting, tantamount to having Dame Edna push aside Helen Mirren for The Queen. Let's be serious here. Leaving aside the position of Dallas dogcatcher, a buffoon like Bush could never be elected to anything anywhere by anybody.
Baron Cohen's USA is as grotesque, ludicrous and offensive a parody as his Kazakhstan. The real America isn't full of religious loonies who care more about the death of a few stem calles than the slaughter of hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis - and the real White House isn't crawling with demented "neo-cons" fantasising about non-existent WMDs. These are jokes - lampoons by Baron Cohen for comic effect.
A real president wouldn't tear up international treaties, discard diplomatic proprieties, turn friends into enemies and try to wipe out the UN - let alone invade a nation that posed the US no threat. Jokes, folks! Jokes!
Like NASA's moon landing, the whole thing was filmed in an old aircraft hangar in the Nevadan desert, with special effects from Industrial Light & Magic plus Schwarzenegger outtakes.
As can be seen in the real West Wing in The West Wing, President Bartlet sensibly leads a sensible nation and is surrounded by sensible and ethical people devoted to their nation's good and to planetary stability. Bush's cohorts, the likes of Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, are clowns in Baron Cohen's political panto. If you think otherwise, change your therapist or increase your medication.
The plots in The West Wing, too, have a depth, detail and intellectual complexity entirely missing in the Bush burlesque. Think of the program as another Four Corners, making a useful contribution to political debate, while Baron Cohen's effort is akin to The Chaser's War On Everything.
In The West Wing real adults wrestle with real issues, balancing their belief in America's manifest destiny with common decency. Yes, the patriotism gets a bit cloying, but it remains constrained by the rational, with Jed Bartlet standing in the proud tradition of Wilson, FDR and JFK on one of his better days.
Ten years back I wrote a column insisting that John Howard was not my Prime Minister and that I didn't live in his Australia. Thanks to the scientifically validated theory of the parallel universe, I've spent the past decade dwelling and rejoicing in an Australia that celebrated its centenary by becoming a republic and committing itself to reconciliation. In my Australia, Prime Minister Keating congratulated the captain of the Tampa for his efforts in rescuing refugees fleeing tyranny in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Oh, and after a record term in office, Paul graciously handed over the leadership to young Kevin.
But back to the US. As you know, when sitcoms run out of puff, when the writing team can no longer devise dialogue and plot-twists to sufficiently animate a Seinfeld or Raymond (the one everyone is supposed to love), the show is cancelled. Or the networks will dump a series when the ratings collapse. Both happened to Bush when the mid-term ratings recorded one of the largest slumps in history. Rumsfeld, the character most into boots, marching and giving orders, was the first to be given both the boot and his marching orders, while John Bolton was written out of the very next episode. The rest of the cast are working out their contracts.
None will be renewed. Bush's White House will survive only on late-night reruns on free-to-air, coming between the advertorials for exercise machines and the rantings of televangelists.'
- Philip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, January 20-21 2007
'Seems some foolish people regard The West Wing - my all-time favourite program - as a work of televisual fiction. Tsk tsk ... The West Wing is reality television, one of those fly-on-the-wall documentaries that, prior to bio-scoping Bartlet and co, examined the goings-on in the Osbourne household or that macabre ménage at Sylvania Waters.
The West Wing is 100 per cent true. The work of fiction is the Bush administration.
How could anyone imagine otherwise? Confusing the satirical nonsense swirling around President George W with the earnest realities of President Jed Bartlet? Bush is another Borat, a piece of lampoonery devised by the brilliant Sacha Baron Cohen following his success with Ali G.
God knows Baron Cohen provides clues galore. For example, his comic operandi can be seen in the way Bush tortures the English language. Even more than Ali G or Borat, he litters every sentence with malapropisms, mispronunciations and sins of syntax. Does anyone seriously suggest the American public would entrust the red button that launched 10,000 nuke missiles to a president who can't pronounce "nuclear"?
As with Borat and Ali G, George W is performed with gross exaggeration, the performance intentionally unconvincing and implausible. We're dealing with inspired miscasting, tantamount to having Dame Edna push aside Helen Mirren for The Queen. Let's be serious here. Leaving aside the position of Dallas dogcatcher, a buffoon like Bush could never be elected to anything anywhere by anybody.
Baron Cohen's USA is as grotesque, ludicrous and offensive a parody as his Kazakhstan. The real America isn't full of religious loonies who care more about the death of a few stem calles than the slaughter of hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis - and the real White House isn't crawling with demented "neo-cons" fantasising about non-existent WMDs. These are jokes - lampoons by Baron Cohen for comic effect.
A real president wouldn't tear up international treaties, discard diplomatic proprieties, turn friends into enemies and try to wipe out the UN - let alone invade a nation that posed the US no threat. Jokes, folks! Jokes!
Like NASA's moon landing, the whole thing was filmed in an old aircraft hangar in the Nevadan desert, with special effects from Industrial Light & Magic plus Schwarzenegger outtakes.
As can be seen in the real West Wing in The West Wing, President Bartlet sensibly leads a sensible nation and is surrounded by sensible and ethical people devoted to their nation's good and to planetary stability. Bush's cohorts, the likes of Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, are clowns in Baron Cohen's political panto. If you think otherwise, change your therapist or increase your medication.
The plots in The West Wing, too, have a depth, detail and intellectual complexity entirely missing in the Bush burlesque. Think of the program as another Four Corners, making a useful contribution to political debate, while Baron Cohen's effort is akin to The Chaser's War On Everything.
In The West Wing real adults wrestle with real issues, balancing their belief in America's manifest destiny with common decency. Yes, the patriotism gets a bit cloying, but it remains constrained by the rational, with Jed Bartlet standing in the proud tradition of Wilson, FDR and JFK on one of his better days.
Ten years back I wrote a column insisting that John Howard was not my Prime Minister and that I didn't live in his Australia. Thanks to the scientifically validated theory of the parallel universe, I've spent the past decade dwelling and rejoicing in an Australia that celebrated its centenary by becoming a republic and committing itself to reconciliation. In my Australia, Prime Minister Keating congratulated the captain of the Tampa for his efforts in rescuing refugees fleeing tyranny in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Oh, and after a record term in office, Paul graciously handed over the leadership to young Kevin.
But back to the US. As you know, when sitcoms run out of puff, when the writing team can no longer devise dialogue and plot-twists to sufficiently animate a Seinfeld or Raymond (the one everyone is supposed to love), the show is cancelled. Or the networks will dump a series when the ratings collapse. Both happened to Bush when the mid-term ratings recorded one of the largest slumps in history. Rumsfeld, the character most into boots, marching and giving orders, was the first to be given both the boot and his marching orders, while John Bolton was written out of the very next episode. The rest of the cast are working out their contracts.
None will be renewed. Bush's White House will survive only on late-night reruns on free-to-air, coming between the advertorials for exercise machines and the rantings of televangelists.'
- Philip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, January 20-21 2007