Thursday, July 06, 2006

Funniest line ever

I stopped watching the West Wing at the end of Season two (luckily I had Deborah to tell me how bad it was going to get). But I've been systematically rewatching the DVDs ever since I discovered a friend who had them (although my system does involve skipping all the most offensive episodes and occasionally pausing the DVD to yell at the TV). I remain over-attached to the characters, even though I loathe the politics more with each passing season.

There has been a lot of ludicrious dialogue and statements that I wanted to argue against in my blog, but I thought ranting about a cancelled TV show would probably be boring to everyone who wasn't me. But I'm currently watching 'The Stormy Present' and it's just got too ridiculous for me to ignore. In the West Wing world there are large demonstrations in Saudi Arabia and there are a whole bunch of people in the situation room talking about it and some random flunky from the army says:

They seem to be shouting anti-American slogans yet demanding democratic reforms
That is so weird, how can you be pro-democracy and anti-the US? It's not like the US has ever assisted the over-throw of a democratically elected government or anything.

So I'm going to run a competition in the comments - who can name the most democratically elected government's that the US has overthrown or attempted to overthrow. There may even be a prize.

1 comment:

  1. I'll say all of them; it's at least half right. Depends on your language though, in the US "democratic state" is a codeword meaning "obediant to our every whim", and I don't think you'll find they've done anything much to suitibly obediant states, democratic or otherwsie.

    And yes, I too eventually had a conniption watching West Wing, when that otherwise deeply compassionate press secretary informed us that dirt farmers in far parts of the world being murdered by freindly death sqauds was a vital part of the national security. Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here type doublethink.

    "Amazing" that sort of crap has passed from being fiction and onto Fox News, almost as if the West Wing was just a test run for the propaganda to come.

    ReplyDelete