Inspiration
"West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin based the Ritchie character on his perception of President George W. Bush. Ritchie's intelligence is called into question, a common criticism of President Bush, and the character is the governor of Florida, as was the president's brother Jeb. Sorkin wrote the fictional 2002 election as a result of 2000 Democratic candidate Al Gore playing down his intelligence to compete against the folksy Bush. As a result, the West Wing election is in essence a version of events as Sorkin had wished to see them. Sorkin would leave the show at the end of the fourth year, with executive producer John Wells taking a more active role in story development. By contrast, in the 2006 election, Republican candidate Arnold Vinick is portrayed as likeable, principled, and intelligent.
Read more about this topic: Robert Ritchie (The West Wing)
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)