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When Jimmy Smits Played Obama
This is not a blog, it is a link to this article:
http://www.northstarwriters.com/ss083.htm
which compares our current campaign season to the last season of the West Wing. I thought some of you may find it interesting as well.
http://www.northstarwriters.com/ss083.htm
which compares our current campaign season to the last season of the West Wing. I thought some of you may find it interesting as well.
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Apparently the similarities are no accident. From today's Guardian:
Devotees of the West Wing have been talking about it for weeks: the uncanny similarity between the fictional presidential contest that dominated the final seasons of the acclaimed TV show and the real-life drama of this year's election.
Both the real and imagined campaigns have centred on a young, charismatic candidate from an ethnic minority, daring to take on an establishment workhorse with a promise to transcend race and heal America's partisan divide.
But there's a twist.
For what those West Wing fans stunned by the similarity between the fictitious Matthew Santos and the real-life Barack Obama have not known is that the resemblance is no coincidence. When the West Wing scriptwriters first devised their fictitious presidential candidate in the late summer of 2004, they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician - not yet even a US senator - by the name of Barack Obama.
"I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character," West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie told the Guardian.
Full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/barackobama.uselections2008
February 21, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
When I feel disappointed in what Obama has been saying on health care, I have a couple of times thought of the Santos-Vinick debate in the final West Wing season where the candidates are asked to speak to this issue.
Santos, departing from his scripted answer, responds to a Vinick blast at his plan by saying words to the effect of "You know, I'm not crazy about my health care plan, either..."
And then he goes on to argue for Medicare for all. He explains to the audience the dramatically lower administrative overhead with Medicare versus private plans. He says that, when it comes to which approach is better, Medicare for all or private insurance, "my only question is under which plan do I pay less" for the actual health services that are covered. Etc.
If anyone has the panache to pull off something like that with the public and have it actually work to get the public behind a Medicare for all proposal, it might be Obama.
Here's hoping...
February 21, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink