Sunday, November 06, 2005

West Wing Debate Wrap Up, and a Confession

OK, it might have slightly lost it's focus towards the end but tonight's live debate on "The West Wing" between Democrat Senator Bail Organa and Republican Hawkeye Pierce was a treat- a real debate between liberal vitues and neoliberal free market hooey, and of course liberal virtues won out (blame writer / analyst Lawrence O'Donnell). Brad Whitford absolutely called it the other night on "The Colbert Report:" it absolutely was Lawrence O'Donnell's dream debate, literally and proverbially- such a free exchange of ideas would NEVER happen in a real world Presidential debate (I mean, could you imagine El Presidente... left to fend for himself... in a battle of ideas and ideology?!?), but gosh it was nice to see in any case. And when Jimmy Smits did his mantra about the virtues of liberalism... on American television no less... my mother and I almost wept (Dad was in the other room watching "Robocop" alas).* It was great stuff. Why anybody would watch that "Commander in Chief" hargle bargle is beyond me.

And the latest Simpsons Halloween episode was also mighty fine: a nice dig at the World Series which always pushes the Halloween episode to after Halloween, a thinly veiled shot at reality tv and our skewed entertainment mores (tv sex = bad, tv violence = awesome!), and I just had to laugh when Kang and Kodos accidentally sucked the universe and God, the big cheese, out of existance after trying to speed up a baseball game. "Smooth move Space-lax."

* No I don't live at home. I was there to mooch Sunday dinner. I also had a chance to read my mother's latest "New York" magazine with the nice big feature article about Times columnist Maureen Dowd- the total package: a brilliant writer into who happens to be into film noir with vintage movie star glamour and beauty. Ah... she can eviscerate me any day.

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