Social and Cultural References
Writer Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. is a former Washington insider, and the episode carries many references to contemporary political themes. The web site in question, bringing the leak about Hoynes, is the real-life Drudge Report, a political site that made its fame during the Lewinsky scandal. "The West Wing" had on several occasions been in contact with Matt Drudge, the operator of the site, for permission to use its logo on the series, but been turned down. When the site was used without Drudge's permission, he reportedly reacted with anger. The timing of the episode, however, was fortuitous, in that it coincided with the much-publicised Drudge story about presidential candidate John Kerry's alleged affair with a journalist.
The Democratic Washington mayor coming out in favor for a pilot program of school vouchers, could be based on Mayor Anthony A. Williams, who broke ranks with his party to support a similar scheme by congressional Republicans.
Perhaps the most peculiar fact associated with the episode was a letter by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative John M. McHugh addressed to show character Josh Lyman, concerning the closing of an upstate New York army base. Josh points out that the deep-snow training base of Fort Drum is relatively useless in a time when most wars take place in desert terrain. Clinton and McHugh wrote a tongue-in-cheek response pointing out flaws in Lyman’s reasoning.
Read more about this topic: Full Disclosure (The West Wing)
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or cultural:
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)