Uncle Fluffy nods at the approval of the abortion pill, and presides over a staff whose vocal advocacy for abortion brooks no debate. President Bartlet oscillates between authoritarianism and his desire to be liked, the latter persona dubbed “Uncle Fluffy” by his staffers. The message, especially to left-leaning Catholic viewers, was that the best and the brightest of Catholics took the live-and-let-live position on same-sex relations and abortion, although in the latter case, never entertaining the idea that the latter really meant live and let die. But Bartlet’s success comes at a price: his lassitude towards abortion and his outright embrace of same-sex marriage, both in fundamental conflict with Catholic teaching. The brilliant, articulate Bartlet became the face of intellectual Catholics, who could be accepted as peers among the smart secular kids.
The success of The West Wing was such that a New York Times poll in late 2000 indicated that Bartlet would win 75 per cent of the vote were he to run in the presidential election that year.
MARTIN WING PRO FREE
Only a lonely post on the Free Republic site worried about the ramifications of an ideological onslaught of clever entertainment on the soul of a populace. Amazingly, as the show garnered awards, virtually no pro-life people complained. But advocating abortion under the approving eye of the Catholic President of the United States was a new step. Hollywood has, of course, long had a soft spot for the abortion industry – that is only natural, given the movies’ embrace of inconsequential sex. He is, it is implied, of the Mario Cuomo school: “personally opposed to abortion, but …” From this moment on we never hear Bartlet utter a single word in defence of the unborn. The unspoken message is that we should approve of the granddaughter’s maturity and be appalled by those terrible pro-lifers.īartlet, we are told, “spent eight months travelling around the country discouraging young women from having abortions”. This group, we learn, threatened his 12-year-old granddaughter because she expressed pro-choice views in a teen magazine. Bartlet sonorously corrects the Protestant pastor on the first commandment, then condemns the Christian leaders for not denouncing a fringe group of pro-life campaigners. He erupts into the pilot episode just as his liberal staffers have locked horns with pro-life Christian lobbyists. Bartlet, a Nobel Prize-winner, doting father and faithful husband, is always the smartest guy in the room he just wants to make the world a kinder, gentler place. Josiah Bartlet is played by Martin Sheen, himself a practising Catholic and recipient of the 2008 Notre Dame Laetare award, who insisted that his character be Catholic to give him a “moral framework”.
But these arguments often revealed the biases of the programme-makers, and never presented a pro-life or pro-family viewpoint, except in the mouths of bigots or fools. He could put into his characters’ mouths arguments from both sides on immigration, gun control and affirmative action.
MARTIN WING PRO SERIES
As an art historian, I appreciate the masterful manipulation of words and images, but as a Catholic I am appalled to see how this series worked to normalise same-sex marriage and abortion among my co-religionists.Īaron Sorkin, the show’s creator, developed a brilliant bait-and-switch style for handling partisan conflicts. The show ran from 1999-2006 and won countless awards (29 Emmys alone) for screenwriting, acting and direction. The shock was not that Hollywood was placing its thumb heavily on the scales (again), but that the Commander-in-Chief of this campaign, President Josiah Bartlet, was written as a rosary-praying, Notre Dame-educated, Latin-speaking Catholic.
MARTIN WING PRO FULL
One of the smartest examples of TV writing I have ever seen, The West Wing has a captivating cast of actors, innovative filming, and brilliantly-crafted plots which are full of insights into US history and politics – all put at the service of aggressively promoting a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage agenda. I was a single mum in Rome during the heyday of The West Wing, so I come to this a couple of decades and a few elections short, but my quarantine catch-up came as a shock.
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