Sep 26, 2018
Post-Cold War liberal chauvinism knew no better
ideological conduit than the hit NBC series
The West
Wing. Foreign policy was
imperial, staffers were self-satisfied, and Serious Democrats
fended off radical leftists and made the Tough Choices needed to
run a benevolent superpower.
The
West Wing, created and
primarily written by Aaron Sorkin, heavily influenced the politics
of dozens of high-status Obama-era liberals. By their own
admission, we know it had among its superfans Obama staffers Sam
Graham-Felsen and Eric Lesser, Vox founders
Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, The New Statesman’s Helen Lewis, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (who
produced and wrote for the show), Democratic party hacks Meredith
Shiner and Micah Lasher, and many more. Indeed, it’s fair to say
anyone under 40 who came up through the ranks of liberal public
relations and politics during the Obama years was either directly
impacted by The West
Wing or, indirectly, by
those under its comforting, Starbucks-color-palette
worldview.
On
this week's episode, we discuss how this Sorkinized worldview both
informed and reflected prevailing thought in the Democratic Party,
promoted smugness as the highest virtue, and––more generally––how
ideology is spread through seemingly benign cultural products like
schlocky television dramas.
We
are joined by Toronto-based writer and co-host of the
Michael and Us
podcast Luke Savage.