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Category: Entertainment
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Matt Santos is Barack Obama’s avatar
Jimmy Smits and Barack ObamaFans of The West Wing have noticed uncanny parallels between the show’s Texas Rep. Matt Santos, and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
Like Obama, Santos is a young, charismatic politician making a long-shot bid for the presidency. Like Obama, he refuses to be defined, or limited, by his ethnicity. And like Obama, he challenges a better-known establishment Democrat who wears the mantle of inevitability.
Life imitating art?
(Story continues below interactive map.)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Actually, just the reverse, says former West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie.
Attie told the Guardian newspaper that he modeled his fictional congressman on Obama in the summer of 2004, after being wowed by Obama’s keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
“I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character,” said Attie, who worked as a speechwriter for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Dick Gephardt before moving to Hollywood. “He had done a great speech at the convention (which nominated John Kerry) and people were beginning to talk about him.”
Like any good political operative, Attie picked up the phone and called Obama aide David Axelrod for the back story.
“I said, ‘Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.’”
Latino actor Jimmy Smits had already been cast for the show, so Attie was particularly interested in how Obama addressed the issue of race. He said Axelrod’s answers helped him conceive Santos’s approach to his own Hispanic identity.
They also spurred him to make his character, you guessed it, a former community organizer. Santos is married, with two young children. And though his political rivals hammer away at his inexperience, he manages to prevail through inspiring speeches, a message of change, grassroots organizing – and several, extraordinarily lucky breaks.
Attie tells the Guardian that Axelrod, now chief strategist for the Obama campaign, joked in a recent email: “We’re living your scripts!”
Harder to explain is why Republicans are also channeling the show’s last season, which aired on NBC in early 2006.
In the final episodes, Santos runs against GOP Sen. Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda, a maverick from the West who beats out a preacher rival (resembling Pat Robertson more than Mike Huckabee). Vinick is portrayed as a straight-shooter mistrusted by the party’s conservatives because of his views on some social issues. Sound familiar?
But those looking for prophetic signs about the 2008 race may be disappointed.
In the show, Santos wins the presidency by a narrow margin, but that was not what the writers originally intended, according to The New York Times.
In fact, the script had Vinick winning – until actor John Spencer, who played Santos’s running-mate, Leo McGarry, died of a heart attack in December, 2005. The show’s creators decided it would simply be too tough on viewers if they killed off McGarry’s character, and then let his rival win. So they wrote a second ending.
Take your pick.
View Slate’s video comparison
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Jon Stewart’s teleprompter is working again
After 100 days without writers, TV shows began to return to normal yesterday after most of the striking writers voted to return to work.
Writers for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show were back to work on Wednesday morning, making Jon Stewart one of the first late-night hosts to return to his pre-strike glory.
Before cameras rolled in the Manhattan studio, Stewart seemed pretty pumped up. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” blared, and he mouthed lyrics and drummed along on his desk while looking over his first script in more than three months. (Story continues below interactive map.)
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Stewart began his newscast musing, “Words in the prompter, script on my desk, vending machine upstairs out of Funyuns … The writers are back!” After a celebratory dance, and loud cheers from his studio audience, he announced, “It is no longer ‘A Daily Show’ It is once again, The Daily Show! We’re back, baby!”
The Associated Press reports that ratings for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report haven’t actually been hurt by the strike. The Daily Show has had around the same number of viewers this January as in 2007 (1.6 million), and The Colbert Report viewers have gone up 6 percent from last year.
It’s possible that Stewart and Stephen Colbert can pull off their own jokes without relying as heavily on their writers.
At yesterday’s Daily Show, Stewart and Colbert riffed for a while via telecast before settling in to tape the segment the writers had prepared for them, which joked about a coffee-getters union strike. The joke was a little forced in comparison with the hosts’ off-the-cuff banter.
After The Daily Show wrapped for Wednesday, the studio audience got to watch Stewart tape the introduction for The Daily Show: Global Edition, which is filmed once a week. This time, Stewart’s opening joke was improvised, inspired by a question an audience member asked him before the show began.
Is it possible that Stewart’s better without a script?
Read related stories: Entertainment · Television
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Alice Waters, food fighter
Advocating locally grown food has taken Alice Waters far beyond Berkeley, home of Chez Panisse, the restaurant she founded in 1971.
Waters is author of nine cookbooks, head of the Chez Panisse Foundation, vice president of Slow Food (as in the opposite of fast food) International. And this week, she will be rubbing elbows with the global muckety mucks attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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Sessions on the forum agenda include “Rethinking the Food Chain” and “Are We Being Bio-Foolish,” topics close to her heart.Waters has been called a food revolutionary for her belief in organically grown foods, served only when they are in season.
Chez Panisse serves only one meal a day, using meats, vegetables and other foodstuffs provided by a carefully developed network of suppliers. Without knowing what the menu will be, diners reserve tables months in advance.
“Chez Panisse is a much larger enterprise than a restaurant,” wrote biographer Thomas McNamee, in Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. “It is a standard-bearer for a system of moral values. It is the leader of a style of cooking, of a social movement, and of a comprehensive philosophy of doing good and living well.”
Waters also pioneered the Edible Schoolyard project, in which schoolchildren prepare and eat food they grow themselves.
Now she is planning an event for Labor Day weekend, called Slow Food Nation, in which farmers and chefs will demonstrate earth-friendly foods.
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1 Comments
#1. Paul V 03.06.2008
Barack is no Avatar,
He can not win a big state no matter what anyone say He can not get elected with out winning a big state, and because he lied about Nafta, No matter how you cut it,, He lied on video that now one from his campaign meet with the canadians,, but ti was true, show you how barack going to run the show,and because of his wife
Michelle Obama is hurting Barack Campaign she need to get off the campaign trail,,, Really she look like Mike tyson with Hair for god sakes.
Barack is not going to win the presidency,,
He can not even win 1 big state,,, Everyone is caught up in this Barack Obama magic show, the democrats just gave this campaign away to the republicans, Barack will never see the white House only if he takes a tour,,, The Obama campaign
think if Hilary gone he will pick up the other half of the Democratic votes,,, that is where he is wrong,,,He will only pick up a third of Hilary votes, the there 2/3 well half of them are going to act like obama voter if obama don’t win they are not going to vote ,,, 1/3 of Hilary voter will not vote,,and the other third is like me I voted for Hilary
I am voting for Experience, which is Hilary,, if Hilary is pushed out ,, My vote like tens of thousands are going to vote for McCain,,, If Obama get Hilary to be her vice president,, Obama will still lose, but if Hilary win she will take the presidency Obama can be vice president,, so he can get On the job training ,,,, this is the only way its going to work,,, American people are so dumb,, thinking Obama got a shot, even tho he has not won a single big state it going to matter,, Even the Media is finally see that..
Who has more experience, well in order
1 Hilary
2 McCain,
3 Ron Paul
4 Barack
That sums it up right there, Hilary in this for the long haul She is fighting Barack , McCain & the Media and she still doing good,, She has half the democratic votes, LOL
Now that is funny,,,,, Do the math,,,
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