Sorkin's other soft spot... is Sorkin, like so many other Hollywood
celebrities, in therapy? In episode "Noel" (Season 2), Josh Lyman has
a episode Sorkin must have snatched right from the dime-store psychology
section. Lyman is anxious, easily angered, tense, nervous, and he
can't relax. He yells at the President. He cuts his hand.
Leo orders him to see a psychologist, Dr. Stanley Keyworth. Keyworth
can only be described as godlike, in his infinite wisdom and patience.
He is the ultimate projection of every psychotherapist's wettest dreams.
He is also, in his absolute conviction that he is fit to judge the sanity of
other people, the most arrogant character ever to appear on West Wing.
We are asked to believe that Josh didn't notice that it was a window, not a
glass that he broke with this fist-- repression!-- and that whenever music
plays he actually hears sirens, or at least his subconscious interprets the
music as sirens, or thinks that it sounds like sirens which subconsciously
reminds him of real sirens--- whatever. The smugness with which Dr.
Stanley asserts these things, and the creepy way Josh goes Bedford in
response (after the cliche-ridden resistance phase has passed), practically
crawling on his hands and knees an licking Dr. Keyworth's boots, was a
low point of season 2. I mean, really, really low.
Even more creepily, Sorkin glibly presents Stanley with the power to label
Josh as PTSD and, if he wanted to, remove him from the White House staff,
and even have him institutionalized, all on the basis of and with the only
authority of his so-called "expertise".
I love "West Wing". It is one of a handful of television dramas ("The Bold Ones", "Hill Street Blues",
"St. Elsewhere", "Mad Men") that was worth watching for it's artistic value alone. It is, at times,
brilliant; it's always at least very good (at least up to the fifth season). It is occasionally -- very occasionally-- annoying. We're hardest
on the ones we love, aren't we?
Bartlet is allegedly a liberal, and he generally holds liberal positions on most social and some fiscal issues.
In fact, the show makes a point of Bartlet-- unlike Clinton and Obama in real life-- actually standing firm for certain
enlightened, tolerant, liberal positions, instead of compromising in order to cut deals with red state Democrats or
Republicans.
Real liberals, however, don't have a lot of reverence for the military. They might or might not believe
that the military and the police are necessary, but it's a regrettable necessity, and real liberals can't not be
conscious of the fact that the culture of the military is decidedly anti-liberal. Real liberals want to make the world
safe for wimps. Real liberals recognize that the culture of authoritarian militarism is a self-sustaining model for
violence and repression.
But Sorkin's projection, President Bartlet, is a post-Reagan Democrat. Post-Reagan Democrats like Clinton and Obama
realized that to get elected, you had to outflank the republicans on law and order and
guns and the death penalty. So Bartlet
sucks up to the military.
I think it is a desperate attempt by a thin-skinned liberal to prove to the world that he
is not a pussy.
Why it matters to Sorkin, that Bartlet is not perceived as a pussy, is beyond me. It's obviously a touchy issue, for it is handled on "West Wing"
with this awkward, prissy bravado, as if Sorkin wants to make sure that no one suspects for even one moment that
he isn't willing to kill lots of people if it's helpful to American
interests, because, God bless us, we're Americans.
Behind that bravado can only be the absolutely godless and anti-liberal assumption that an American life is inherently
more valuable than an Arab or French or African life.
In the episode entitled "What Kind of Day has it Been", an American fighter pilot patrolling the no-fly zone
over Iraq (part of the peace conditions after the first U.S. - Iraq War under Bush I) is shot down. Bartlett goes
all mushy with concern about the pilot, his family, his pet hamster and goldfish, and at one point announces that
if anything happens to this pilot he will invade Bahgdad. He says this with great sterninity and gravitas.
I am
not a pussy.
No real person like this -- Bartlet, at this moment-- exists. A
real liberal would have already been considering whether it would be wise to
start an entire war requiring the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people
to get back at a man for causing the death of one American pilot. But
Bartlet is, at that moment, utterly a projection of Sorkin's
insecurities about his liberalism: they might not think I'm manly!.
Sorkin's fussy compensatory projections emerge quite regularly, often expressed as awestruck respect for Secret Service
Agents and Generals. The awful part of this is that some liberals, knowing that Sorkin is an enlightened liberal himself,
might conclude that most military men really are quite sane and rational and, well, just so damn manly.
The most evil moment of this Sorkinese perspective came in Episode 72 (Election Night") when Donna fell hard for Christian
Slater as an uber-manly military aide. Oh my gawwdd-- he's just so hot! At least, compared to the thoughtful and
compassionate Josh Lyman. But then, Donna spent much of the first
season complaining about having to pay taxes. West Wing's incipient
Tea Party leader.
At a meeting in the situation room to discuss the downed pilot, a member of the "individuals in suits who sit in the
situation room to make it look like an important situation has developed group" lamely suggests they pursue diplomatic channels instead
of considering a military rescue. Leo, oozing with manly testosterone, castrates the man
with rusty nail-clippers. We are not prissy little
pinafore-waving dilettantes! Not we! And, after all, this is an AMERICAN
life at stake. But Sorkin betrays his double-standard: this
straw man arguing for negotiation is a preposterous caricature of a
liberal's projection of what a conservative thinks a liberal sounds like.
Follow me? And his provided precisely so Leo and Bartlet can look
manly by contrast, even though they are in favor of health care.
I admire Sorkin's ability to present both sides of most hot
political issues with credibility and conviction. There is a case to
be made for a strong military response to certain events, to lower taxes,
and to strong security. But why is he so afraid to show us the Donald
Rumsvelds, the Richard Perles, the Westmorelands, the Gulf of Tonkins, the
faked intelligence, the paranoid crypto-fascists, the torturers (who all
came out of the woodwork-- you think from nowhere?-- during the Bush
Administration)? It's a glaring omission, especially since Sorkin is
so careful to show us the faults in the liberal true-believers.
I am convinced he doesn't want to be accused of being a being what used to
be called a "bleeding heart" liberal.
It's all a grand tribute to how TV
and Hollywood works-- we all love to look rational and enlightened and
compassionate but when the rubber hits the road, we are
brutes and killers and always will be.
All Contents Copyright
© Bill Van Dyk
2010 All Rights Reserved
Font: Verdana
