"I Won't Lie To You, Being Fictional Was A Big Advantage"

BARTLET Well, it seems to me your problem is a lot like the problem I had twice.

OBAMA Which was?

BARTLET A huge number of Americans thought I thought I was superior to them.

OBAMA And?

BARTLET I was.

OBAMA I mean, how did you overcome that?

BARTLET I won’t lie to you, being fictional was a big advantage.

Maureen Dowd's column latest column in the Times was written by Sorkin -or someone extremely proficient in Sorkinese. Check it out. It has all of Sorkin's greatest attributes, and some of his weakest flaws as well; it gets an A+ for rhetoric, for pacing, and for being a delightful read. Sorkin's dialogue is fantastic; but his soliloquies that make my head sing. In the world of writing, Sorkin is a classical composer and it shows. Words build on words; thoughts hinge on what came before, and though it may begin with one "instrument", by the end there is a full orchestra.

I wish I could quote my favorite lines from the Dowd column. In truth, though, that would end up being the whole thing. But a few ones that got my blood pumping would be:

"As a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don't like small towns, God, people with jobs or America."

"I've been a little out of touch but is there a mandate that the vice president be skilled at field dressing a moose... ...and selling Air Force Two on eBay?"

"Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional."

"The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it."

And the creme de la creme:

"Call them liars, because that's what they are. Sarah Palin didn't say 'thanks but no thanks' to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said 'Thanks'. You were raised by a single mother on food stamps - where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annopolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I'd ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you're at it, I want the word 'patriot' back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn't know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can't do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie - the truth isn't their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they've earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It's not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman, and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology, and common sense too? It's not bad enough she's forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It's not enough that a woman shouldn't have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist's baby too? I don't know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she's got the qualifications of one. And you're worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!"

There are weaknesses; I don't know if Sarah Palin has forced her daughter into a loveless marriage and neither do Aaron Sorkin or Bill Maher, even though that doesn't stop them from repeating the line. Sorkin has a troubled and complex history with women characters, and some of that comes out in how he chooses to frame Palin in the piece, though the actual language he uses in its context creates the overall effectiveness. But overall, I want Sorkin to write political speeches - I don't care for whom. I want politicians, on both sides, to be forced to watch Sorkin's politicians and especially their speeches. I want to hear about how "the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless". I want a president to stand up and challenge the idea that the ACLU is unAmerican in some way. I want a president (or presidential nominee) to be Andrew Shepherd and say:

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land is the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the 'land of the free'."

So go; read the Maureen Dowd piece. And then rent The American President; watch some episodes of The West Wing or Sports Night (both have those moments of greatness of writing). And embrace Sorkinese. It makes the world a slightly better place; and it envisions a world in which people are truly, desperately, achingly passionate about their work and their place in the world; where every day they strive, in small ways and big ways, to do the right thing and to be the best they can be. And that, along with the way Sorkin chooses to tell it, is music to my ears. So one more quote from Sorkin, about the qualities of music and writing:

"Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings can't."

Why Does Maureen Dowd Still Have a Job?

The New York Times has got to fire Maureen Dowd. That bastion of liberal media has time and again pushed women and women's issues off to the side (or rather, to the Fashion and Style section), and that has to change as well. But they have really, really got to fire Maureen Dowd. This is a woman who, as Jesse Taylor of Pandagon.net writes, "honestly believes every woman in America has the God-given ability to be as stupid as she is, but are just less jaded". This is a woman who thinks it is a "nutty idea" to discuss some of what has been exposed in the primary season: the sexism of the political pundits, of the fact that the DNC didn't stand up to attacks on Hillary Clinton's voice, her "nut-cracking" ways, and the myriad of other remarks -some of which were made by Dowd herself. Dowd gave those remarks credence when she failed to elucidate how absolutely ridiculous statements like, "We are at war. Is this how she'll talk to Kim Jong-il?" after Clinton teared up on the campaign trail, and instead supported the idea that Clinton's tears were unbecoming a president and claimed there was something "Nixonian" about the whole affair. Really? Nixon? Kristen Schaal managed to say how ridiculous that whole tear-gate was in two sentences on The Daily Show: "Presidents aren't supposed to cry? Well, I suppose those are just freedom drops" as a picture of teary-eyed George W. Bush flashed on the screen.

Maureen Dowd seems impervious to the idea that she herself has managed to create some anger and some resentment in her columns, especially when she quotes from Amy Chozick's Wallstreet Journal article about how Obama is too skinny to win women Clinton supporters, and ignores the fact that Chozick apparently started a Yahoo! message thread in order to do "research" for that article. That is what I call having your fingers on the pulse of the Clinton Nation, because people who respond to questions like "Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his "no excess body fat?" definitely represent the majority of Clinton's constituents. And Dowd, along with many other Obama supporters and quite a few Clinton supporters, seems to be under the impression that Obama automatically deserves all of the votes with no complaints from the women voters who have felt bashed and bruised and marginalized by the treatment Hillary Clinton was subject to on the campaign trail. And I'm one of those Clinton supporters who would rather we all just fall in line and vote for Obama, because he matches up with Clinton on almost every single issue under the sun and because a McCain presidency would be a bit of a catastrophe regarding such trivial issues like environmental policy, economic policy, foreign policy, and -of course- women's rights. But not for one second do I think it is remotely appropriate to minimize what we've learned from this election cycle: that sexism and racism are and continue to be a large motivating force in American society, that sexism is allowed to reign free through the media outlets purportedly designated as "news-gathering organizations", that something ought to be done about it, and the people who feel burned by it should not be poo-pooed or told to suck it up and get in line.

Obama represents change; that is his line, his platform, and one of the reasons for his shining star. Because of that, it doesn't seem nutty to suggest Obama include the devastating affects of sexism in his rhetoric for change. It may not happen, but it doesn't seem 'nutty'. Nor does it seem nutty to expect to open up the New York Times opinion page and not find a woman comparing Obama to Mr. Darcy in an attempt, so it seems, to "explain" to all of those ungracious women voters who may still be angry, why they should -as Elizabeth Bennett does in regard to Darcy- take Obama to their hearts; to explain why Obama should be more popular with women voters, because he embodies the ever-elusive Romantic hero both in temperament and appearance, instead of focusing on -just reaching here- women as informed voters first and overly emotional fiction readers never.

But of course, that seems to be a pipe dream. And Dowd's seemingly strained understanding of Obama herself -is he really proud and haughty, or is that just an "ill-founded and mistaken premise"- is presented as a conundrum all women face. Plus, I have to say, I'm pretty sure she is presenting a version of Pride and Prejudice I myself have never read -a version where Darcy is almost universally acclaimed for his charisma, his charm, and his ability to ensorcell (™ Aaron Sorkin) crowds, and where only Elizabeth Bennett (in this case, women voters who preferred Clinton) just doesn't get it. And for all of those reasons, Dowd needs to either get a clue and fast, or write about those silly women and their silly emotional impulses elsewhere. And maybe the New York Times can get someone who actually seems to respect women; someone like Anna Quindlen.