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gradenko_2000 posted:Not a commentary on the rest of the film but I just got back from Bombshell and Allison Janney was great in it Janney continues to the be the actor I come away with the most respect for in the re watch, so I'm glad she's still doing good work. You know what? Schiff is actually really good too, they just butchered the character of Toby but that's not Schiff's fault, he does the best with what he's given.
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Feb 21, 2020 18:08
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I just watched 'I, Tanya' and Janney is really great in that. On the other hand, what was Schiff good in? It's not 'The Good Doctor', 'House of Lies' or 'Ballers' which are the places I've seen him. He's the same grumpy, shouty Boomer in all of them.
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Feb 21, 2020 19:21
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Acinonyx posted:I just watched 'I, Tanya' and Janney is really great in that. On the other hand, what was Schiff good in? It's not 'The Good Doctor', 'House of Lies' or 'Ballers' which are the places I've seen him. He's the same grumpy, shouty Boomer in all of them. He's really good in Pentagon Wars!
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Feb 21, 2020 19:22
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We had a bit of a meandering time this week: However, you should still check it out cuz we talk election nonsense and we want everyone to get hyped for Bernoe. small personal news I'm gonna be an uncle in 72 hours or so, first child of this generation is... imminent. 
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Feb 22, 2020 06:12
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https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/1233415121696960512 Zero surprises, his entire campaign is West Wing cosplay
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Feb 28, 2020 16:59
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I'm now reminded of Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Catch Me If You Can charming Martin Sheen with nothing more than a fake certificate and a firm handshake.
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Feb 28, 2020 17:05
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbre5Fs9m8I Hello again, it's time for another super timely / relevant episode: The return of Lord John Marbury, Duke of Evenham, Marquess of Fartsenbrook, Douchebag of Kent etc. etc. i'm pretty drunk, i used to live in South Carolina and it's a hellplace don't listen to a single instance of them trying to be relevant. Bernie's gonna win
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Mar 1, 2020 07:14
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Frankly, the british army did a lot more damage in Norther Ireland than the IRA ever did.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:46
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That bit about the "just vote!" drive of the 90s spoke to me. I distinctly remember the day before the 2019 UK General Election I saw that Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter movies, tweeted out an endorsement for the Labour party, and because I have brainworms decided to look up if the rest of the Harry Potter cast had said anything political and the only other person was Emma Watson who was promoting some kind of organization of hers that was about encouraging women to vote. But of course it was all about just the act of voting, never mind who in particular. That kinda stuck in my craw because if you end up encouraging someone to vote for the Tories, well, are you really helping? And then of course there's that class/privilege divide where you have someone like Watson, arguably the most successful of the Potter cast members, taking this apolitically-political position because it probably doesn't matter much to her who's sitting in 10 Downing Street, while Leung is a C- or D-list actor who's also a POC and they're able to recognize that Labour has good politics. ___ Also, the episode about Stu's Bernie Journey was really touching and cathartic. Keep fighting the good fight.
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Mar 2, 2020 13:35
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https://twitter.com/said_mitch/status/1234482910931058689 gently caress YOU, SORKIN! https://twitter.com/said_mitch/status/1234486182635016193 
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Mar 2, 2020 17:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:That bit about the "just vote!" drive of the 90s spoke to me. I just can't believe we're still expected to cotton to the kabuki that everyone boosting Whatever Initiative just wants to increase democracy! They definitely don't have an agenda! or believe in things at all! it makes me insane, and there's a LOT of decorum poisoned wealthy people for whom politics has forever been a team sport that dig in HARD on it. gradenko_2000 posted:Also, the episode about Stu's Bernie Journey was really touching and cathartic. Keep fighting the good fight. thanks I had a hard time recording at first cuz I struggled to put my feelings into words without choking up with tears, phew. Preaching to the choir but Heather's story alone is reason enough to shatter the DNC into a gazillion pieces
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Mar 3, 2020 00:17
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I've had this idea turning around in my head since yesterday as I was listening to a podcast about LBJ's The Great Society. Johnson announced that program at a speech in Ann Arbor, Michigan in May of 1964, and while I'm sure there's some level of misattribution going on in how liberals describe how meaningful the speech was, the idea was that Johnson wanted to appeal directly to the American people, to create a sense of public approval and public desire for the program, so that Congress could be pressured into doing it, rather than LBJ approaching Congress first-and-directly to try and get some legislation passed. And he also did this for The War on Poverty, and I think most of us are familiar with JFK as an orator, even if he didn't have nearly as much luck getting domestic policy passed. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, if you're Aaron Sorkin and you're coming at this as your known history, then it feeds into this conception of the Presidency and politics and governance as being motivated and driven by Great Speeches (and besides the fact that Sorkin is himself a writer and probably has an inflated sense of his own profession's worth). Like, you look at this: quote:Your imagination and your initiative and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. And you get to thinking that LBJ managed to pull off what he did because he had some really drat good speechwriters and he managed to inspire enough of the country to change its course, simply by stirring that feeling in them to win over their support. That might even be a little true! ... then we get back to The West Wing and we find that, okay, even if we grant that Great Speeches can do that, we still have a problem that Bartlet never makes a Great Speech about anything in particular! There's not a Great Speech of him proposing education reform, there's not a Great Speech of him proposing universal healthcare, there's not a Great Speech of him about revitalizing unions. There might be some moments of him laying sick owns on Republicans, or changing a staffer's mind on a personal level, or even being inspiring during a military confrontation, but none of that is particularly useful in the context of what would be good for the country/what would be good politics. I guess where I'm going with this is that we tend to rag on Sorkin for having this idea that great speeches can transform politics. Now, I'm not entirely on the side of saying that he's right, but what I am saying is that even if he was right, he never does anything with it! And, much like Obama, who is a fantastic orator, that waste of a gift is a far deeper condemnation of his politics than the idea that oration and speechwriting doesn't matter.
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Mar 5, 2020 08:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:sniiiip I read this when you posted it, btw, and liked it. Speaking of posting, today's episode rules and is one that I would actually HEARTILY recommend watching, if for nothing else than the forums brewhaha. Everyone stay safe, stay inside if you can, build your community and fight like hell when the worst comes.
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Mar 17, 2020 23:14
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hello again I am necroing my own thread because literally the night after I last posted in it I moved out of new york city and have been wrassling vulnerable family members into various forms of compliance and risk mitigation. hurray anyway that's not what this thread is about : Don't Be An rear end in a top hat About Drinking drink whatever the gently caress you want OH DURR I'M GOING TO TAKE A HIGH HORSE ABOUT THE FORM IN WHICH I CONSUME POISON i hope everyone is coping adequately and as always solidarity
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Apr 11, 2020 22:25
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*Dramatically hands Gunshow Poophole a piece of paper* "Just four little words* *one minute later, dramatically shows to note to someone else, it's "Aaron Sorkin loving sucks"*
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Apr 13, 2020 21:29
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What was the website you were referencing? Bread and something? I was listening while driving and couldn't write it down. I'm glad you guys didn't die yet, I was running low on podcasts!
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Apr 14, 2020 14:27
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Acinonyx posted:What was the website you were referencing? Bread and something? I was listening while driving and couldn't write it down. check the show notes!
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Apr 15, 2020 04:26
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This week's episode has gone from SUCK to BLOW I'm surrounded by assholes!
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Apr 25, 2020 21:58
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The segment about the computer chip recall pinged some dark recess of my mind and I recalled an incident with Intel recalling a lot of its CPUs back in the 90s because of inaccurate floating-point operation results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug This was in 1994, so no longer recent even at the time this season was current, and (obviously) was not enough to sink Intel nor to trigger a bailout, but it's the closest thing that I could think of
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Apr 28, 2020 04:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:The segment about the computer chip recall pinged some dark recess of my mind and I recalled an incident with Intel recalling a lot of its CPUs back in the 90s because of inaccurate floating-point operation results tbf $475m against earnings is not chump change so, maybe this is what I'm thinking of. the only other reference point specifically with chips I could directly dredge up was literally Meltdown / Spectre stuff which of course was just sorta swept under the rug. and that was less than five years ago. maybe some computer company bankruptcy or whatever which led me down a wiki rabbit hole to discover that Gateway2000 was founded in (drum roll) Sioux City Fuckin Iowa, headquarters in North Sioux. lollll I wonder if I met any Waitt relatives on my BernieJourney
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Apr 28, 2020 04:44
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Toby is the woooorst.
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Apr 28, 2020 07:25
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we finally scraped up enough time and mental fortitude to record again A jam packed episode just so much poo poo happening including what should have been a labor dispute but DEMOCRATS
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May 16, 2020 03:26
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I missed a weekly update by one day, but here we go! An episode half dedicated to ensmoothening the administration's collective brain to commit extrajudicial murder Great! Of a diplomat!
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May 23, 2020 21:46
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i thought i remembered this episode, turns out i only remembered like ten percent of it and the other 90 was terrible in a completely different way
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May 25, 2020 03:00
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Doc Hawkins posted:i thought i remembered this episode, turns out i only remembered like ten percent of it and the other 90 was terrible in a completely different way there's just a shitload of uh, terrible character traits being shoehorned into people
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May 25, 2020 03:02
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I think there's a point where you call Toby Josh, but I can't be arsed to actually verify.
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May 25, 2020 14:09
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now i am angry at how many west wing characters i can name
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May 25, 2020 22:23
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Doc Hawkins posted:now i am angry at how many west wing characters i can name The fact that my brain remembers so much of this stupid show is half the reason we made this podcast. Every time someone would bring up a West Wing thing in a post I would be like "gently caress I remember that episode, it was so much bullshit!" and then Stu and I found a way to take that thought process and stretch it out into entertaining banter!
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May 25, 2020 22:26
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The Black Vera Wang: what's interesting to me this episode is that the Republican operative does end up being exactly as competitive and cut-throat (and willing to actually do politics) as we'd expect them to be. There's some level of tonal dissonance against the idea of a Reasonable Republican that the show also tries to promote.
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May 26, 2020 05:18
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this this is a podcast that I needed and I didn't know I watched West Wing as a teen for several episodes mostly because I wondered where they would end up with all that because I was fascinated with the contrast between the show and real life with the Iraq War getting worse and worse, like expecting the characters to stop being dumbasses and acknowledge the world they are in after I got older and began to understand ideology and class consciousness, I developed a visceral antipathy to the West Wing and all that stuff, which I found bizarre back then because I didn't get why was the case. It took me a good while yet to understand that it was because not only represented a specific odious manifestation of liberalism (which Sorkin seems to be a conduit of), but further contributed to its distortion of morality and perception of the world so, kudos to you guys to provide me with some much needed disassembling of that awful thing
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May 26, 2020 06:09
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oh yeah, that reminds me: have you seen any ads for "Masterclasses?" how about the one where aaron sorkin tells you how to write television? some of the hosts of the podcast chapo trap house actually bought and watched it and talked about it in a few recent special episodes. turns out there was still more to say about that rear end in a top hat. if you're itt you probably would like them.
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May 26, 2020 06:49
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If you thought Sorkin predicting Democrats throwing feminism under the bus was prescient, the next episode is going to be a real banger
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May 27, 2020 03:05
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thinking about the last time we recorded an episode was before George Floyd was killed makes my brain do klein bottle contortions anyway here's The Finale of Season 3 and it's a doozy from a television standpoint. Politics standpoint... it's the same old junk but Faster! Solidarity with everyone engaged in tearing this stupid system down. A better world is possible! But it's not in Season 4. Which we'll start next week.
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Jun 11, 2020 17:30
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1. Listening to you two talk yourselves into rationalizing 9/11 being an inside job ("the American people would back a war on Qumar if we let the Golden Gate Bridge plot happen!") had me cackling in my seat. 2. There's something fundamentally disturbing about recalling that Obama staffers were inspired by The West Wing, and then putting this episode together with Jeremy Scahill's work on Obama's drone program and its alleged multiple layers of legal fictions.
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Jun 14, 2020 05:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. Listening to you two talk yourselves into rationalizing 9/11 being an inside job ("the American people would back a war on Qumar if we let the Golden Gate Bridge plot happen!") had me cackling in my seat. Bombs with Qumari signatures can't melt suspension cables! 
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Jun 14, 2020 05:20
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I stilll heartily chuckle over them identifying the signature of a qumari funded bomb or whatever as being ANFO A because it's what every loving non military explosive giant bomb is made from and B because it's what Timothy mcveigh, decidedly NOT qumari terrorist, used and frankly probably made famous in the public / viewership's consciousness
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Jun 14, 2020 05:24
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this guy is a real piece o work https://twitter.com/BradleyWhitford/status/1273155595751895040 lol. this fails on several levels, conceptually, intelllectually...
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Jun 17, 2020 20:10
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they want you to vote for a little bit of white nationalism in order to stave off a full-blown infection many such cases!
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Jun 17, 2020 21:53
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It's ELECTION SEASON BABY! I didn't mention this while we were recording but I think, if I'm not mistaken, this episode has the first laugh-out-loud for Being Actually Funny bit of the show for me so far. The first time Toby is obligated to fulfill his lost wager to Josh is legitimately hilariously timed and well written, and then the bridge meltdown is also pretty funny. we're losing our edge. struggling to preserve our brainwrinkles.
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Jun 22, 2020 04:55
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https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status/1276304058794545160 I saw this tweet and all I could think about was "Oh my god they're going to do an Isaac and Ishmael for Black Lives Matter"
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Jun 26, 2020 14:47
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