Episode 51: How 'The West Wing' Poisoned the Liberal Mind

Citations Needed

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Citations Needed with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:09.3	Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power, PR and the history of bullshit
0:14.6	I am Nemeshirazi.
0:15.8	I'm Adam Johnson.
0:16.8	You can follow the show on Twitter at CitationsPod, Facebook Citations Needed and become a supporter
0:21.8	of the show.
0:22.8	Help us out through Patreon Citations Needed podcast with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:27.6	All your help is so appreciated that way it keeps the show moving along, makes it possible
0:32.6	for us to keep the show going and to give you the content that you crave and no more so
0:38.0	than I think today's episode wouldn't you say Adam?
0:40.4	Yes, quite a bit of popular demand for this episode and I've been wanting to do it for
0:43.7	a very long time because frankly I think it's kind of funny and I think it's actually
0:48.4	one of those things that people sort of talk around but don't talk a lot about specifically
0:52.1	as we talk about on the show often, you know, pop culture is a huge conduit for propaganda
0:57.3	and I really think that post Cold War liberal showbanism really knew no better propaganda
1:03.3	conduit than the hit NBC series from the 2000s, the West Wing.
1:12.8	Thank you for that.
1:13.8	Yeah.
1:14.8	Ta-da.
1:16.3	On the show, foreign policy was sort of unabashedly imperial if not benevolent.
1:21.6	The staffers were self-satisfied and the serious Democrats were constantly fending off radical
1:26.2	leftists and punching the leftists in their own party and making capital T capital C tough
	...

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