So Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democrat senatorial primary by a few percentage points – despite the best efforts of Fox News. There is a question over which of Lieberman and victor Ned Lamont is the more liberal as we would define the term over here – this was perhaps more akin to a Blairite being deselected in favour of an Old Labour type, although it’s not as simple as that. What is interesting – and, yes, pleasing – is the sight of voters turning out en masse to make their voices heard and giving the White House’s favourite Democrat a slapping.
Regardless of the finer points of social security reform, Lieberman’s support for Bush – and his comments along the line that criticising the President at a time of war is bad for the country – makes his loss gratifying. It shows what can happen to politicians who continually disregard the peope who worked to get them elected, and who put their own political careers first. If there was any doubt on the latter point, it was disspelled when Lieberman announced that for the “good of the country” he would run as an independent. He is asking what Connecticut can do for him rather than what he can do for Connecticut.
Meanwhile, someone apparently taking a leaf out of Liberman’s book on being “strong on security” is Dr John Reid, who, in true New Labour Newspeak, tells us that:
“We may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term”.
“Modify” our freedoms? What sort of euphemism is that? And how many freedoms that the government have recently curtailed in the “short-term” have we since had restored by them? Any? And does “short-term” mean “for the duration of the open-ended War on Terror”? Do they not get that making the UK less of a free state is giving into terrorism?
So I was sitting at home plugged into iTunes, flicking through my comments from last year’s Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? on Troubled Diva (voting is still open on this year’s; don’t click if Su Pollard gives you nightmares). I discovered in the comments a sentence I’d written about Shame, Shame, Shame by Shirley & Company in which I said that I was surprised to recognise the song.
At that moment, iTunes shuffled and started playing that exact track. I can only conclude that my laptop is a witch.
At the weekend, I finished watching the first series of The West Wing. It’s a series that hits the ground running, but even so you can see it evolving. The top-billed characters of Sam and Mandy begin to fade early on: although Rob Lowe is the notional star, he quickly becomes an equal part of the ensemble, while the annoying Moira Kelly is sidelined with little to do and disappears entirely after this season. The charismatic President Bartlet, meanwhile, brought marvellously to life by Martin Sheen, takes centre stage from the moment he silences a roomful of arguing people by proclaiming the First Commandment.
It’s my impression – although until I’ve made my way through the next few box sets I won’t be able to confirm it – that the writing is a little rawer to begin with. Issues – and particularly moral ones – are dealt with less subtly than in future scripts and very occasionally a character gives a slightly unrealistic speech (of the sort to which characters in Babylon 5 were regularly prone). The humour is there throughout though, proving not only that you don’t have to be a comedy or a “comedy drama” to be funny; indeed, good drama needs humour. The whole season stands up well seven years on and it’s immediately clear why it was such a hit.
I’ve mentioned before the crossover of actors between 24, Lost and The West Wing, so my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Kiefer Sutherland brain was on the look out for more. The most notable in this season is Reiko Aylesworth – Michelle Desslar in 24 – who pops up in the penultimate episode playing a fellow student of “Sam’s friend”. Also making an appearance – in “He Shall, From Time To Time…” – is Harry Groener as the Secretary of Agriculture. He later appears in Inauguration Day Part 2, in which he turns into a giant snake and eats everyone. (“I’m suffering from relapsing-remitting gargantuan snakeitis.”)
One other actorly observation: in “20 Hours in L.A.”, Donna spots Matthew Perry at a party; apparently in season 4 she is too polite to mention to Joe Quincy that he’s the spitting image of the Friends actor.
Best episodes: “Six Meetings Before Lunch” (if only for CJ doing “The Jackal”), the recently much-cited “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”, and the excellent finale, “What Kind of Day Has It Been?” (which, in retrospect rather ominously, features a problem with the Space Shuttle Columbia).
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