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The big winner this year, 'The West Wing':<br><br><br>LEFT WING SORKIN BLASTS BUSH: WE'RE 'PRETENDING' HE HAS EXHIBITED UNSPEAKABLE COURAGE<br><br>The force behind NBC's WEST WING is blasting off against the real West Wing in upcoming pages<br>of the NEW YORKER, which names Aaron Sorkin "the country's loyal opposition." <br><br>NY'ER reporter Tad Friend has penned a high-impact Talk of the Town set for release in March 4<br>editions. <br><br>Sorkin, the creatorproducerwriter of WEST WING, tells Friend: "It's absolutely right that at<br>this time we're all laying off the [Bush] bubblehead jokes. But that's a far cry from what the<br>Times and CNN and others on whom we rely for unvarnished objectivity are telling us, which is<br>that 'My God! On September 12th he woke up as Teddy Roosevelt! He became the Rough Rider!'" <br><br>Of NBC's own look at a day in the life of the Presidency, 'The Bush White House: Inside the<br>Real West Wing,' which aired as the lead-in to a WEST WING repeat a few weeks ago, Sorkin<br>charges: "The White House pumped up the President's schedule to show him being much busier and<br>more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen?" <br><br>Sorkin continues: "The show was a valentine to Bush. That illusion may be what we need right<br>now, but the truth is we're simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable<br>courage at the World Series by throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, or that he, by<br>God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City and jumbling the first line of the<br>Olympic opening ceremony. <br><br>"The media is waving pom-poms, and the entire country is being polite," Sorkin declares. <br><br>"I just began reading Frank Bruni's campaign book AMBLING INTO HISTORY: THE UNLIKELY ODYSSEY OF<br>GEORGE W. BUSH which begins with Candidate Bush at a service in Texas for seven people who were<br>killed in a church by a crazy gunman. Bruni describes Bush making goofy faces at the press, and<br>it reminds you of a junior high schooler on a museum field trip." <br><br>Sorkin tells the mag that he is planning to revisit the BUSH-GORE Florida showdown in an<br>upcoming episode. <br><br>President Josiah Bartlet [played by actor Martin Sheen, who has called Bush a white knuckled<br>drunk] is up for re-election this November. "Bartlet is going to be running against Governor<br>Robert Ritchie, of Florida, who's not the sharpest tool in the box but who's raised a lot of<br>money and is very popular with the Republican Party,? Sorkin says. <br><br>"It was frustrating watching Gore try so hard not to appear smart in the debates. Why not just<br>say" 'Here's my fucking résumé, what do you got?' We're a completely fictional, nonpolitical<br>show, but one of our motors is doing our version of the old Mad magazine 'Scenes We'd Like to<br>See.' And so to an extent we're going to rerun the last election and try a few different plays<br>than the Gore campaign did." <br><br>XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN FEB 24, 2002 11:37:09 ET XXXXX
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