Reading

[krazykitkat]

The West Wing: The American Presidency As Television Drama edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor

A mixed bag. I'm probably just dumb, but I found some of the essays too academic in style and requiring background knowledge I don't possess.

And I was going to strangle the next writer who felt the need to tell me the show was unrealistic and real West Wing staff spend most of their time on the phone or doing boring paperwork. Well, duh! It's a television series, which is always hyper-realistic (and I'm probably using the completely wrong term), and that's the same for police/hospital/law/etc tv series. Do you think viewers are going to watch an hour of paperwork and phone calls? I read a quote in the Police News the other day which said that policing was 2 hours of boredom, followed by a couple of minutes of sheer terror, followed by 6 hours of paperwork.

Memo to John Podhoretz: your argument may (though I doubt it) carry more weight if you didn't have several factual mistakes regarding the plot of the pilot episode.

By far the most interesting and informative was the final essay, The Transformed Presidency - People and Power in the Real West Wing, by Myron A. Levine, which looked at how the role of West Wing staff, presidential advisors, cabinet secretaries etc has changed over various Presidencies.


The Last Temptation by Val McDermid

The third novel in the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series, and the first that I hadn't seen a televised version of. I very much like McDermid's writing style, and adore Tony and Carol (so close yet even further apart). A disturbing read (and I fear a favourite of Scientologists).

Comments

[mandysbitch.livejournal.com]

was going to strangle the next writer who felt the need to tell me the show was unrealistic

One of the reasons I am *so* not getting this book (although I like the idea) is this sort of statement. I mean, it's not only ignorant, it's plain stupid. Aand there's no excuse - dramatic and poetic licence has been used in literary works since people learned how to be symbolic. Do you think anyone walked out of a Shakespearean play saying, "god, the Prince of Denmark was *so* not like that..."

I thought that if there were some real media or television academics involved then it would be interesting, but I recognised nobody and thought, oh, it's just going to be a bunch of academics who don't *get* television - and that's just irritating.

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

And at least one who kept mentioning that the *real* President wouldn't dress someone down like Jed did to that bigoted "Dr" radio presenter.

There was some interesting parts to the book, but overall I swung between feeling dumb and feeling patronised.

[mandysbitch.livejournal.com]

There was some interesting parts to the book, but overall I swung between feeling dumb and feeling patronised.

Yeah - figures. It's a shame because there's lot of cool things to be said about the West Wing. I should have written that book, dammit! *g*

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

Go on! ;)

[littlemissscifi.livejournal.com]

Memo to John Podhoretz: your argument may (though I doubt it) carry more weight if you didn't have several factual mistakes regarding the plot of the pilot episode.


Typical. He'll criticise it, but he won't put the effort in to do the research.

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

And they were such basic mistakes.