10/30 - The West Wing - The Al Smith Dinner

As seen in the latest episode of The West Wing, both presidential candidates there seem to be with the majority of the American people when it comes to abortion: they believe that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances and should be illegal in some.

Gallup polls from June 2005 found that 55 percent of those polled believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances (and thus presumably illegal in others), that 24 percent believe that abortion should be legal under any circumstances, and that 20 percent believe that abortion should be illegal under any circumstances (see data here). These results are generally consistent with polls taken by Gallup going back decades.

Still, there is a lot of room for disagreement even within that majority, and Santos and Vinick apparently disagree on what restrictions are appropriate. Santos basically approves of restrictions only when they are consistent with past Supreme Court decisions on abortion restrictions, and Vinick wants greater restrictions even though he does not want to see abortion rights overturned entirely.

This episode also deals with many issues reminiscent of real-life presidential campaigns: the role of 527 organizations, the debate over abortion, the Al Smith dinner (perhaps best known because of a clip shown out of context in Fahrenheit 9/11), and the debate over debates. My footnotes are on-line here.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 10/31/2005 11:10:00 AM   

10/29 - Saturday Night Live - Lance Armstrong

My most recent footnotes are for the October 29 episode of Saturday Night Live, which was hosted by cyclist Lance Armstrong. This was the first fake TV news program since Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald announced the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, who had served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and who resigned after being indicted, and that indictment obviously dominated the episode, being addressed in two different sketches as well as in Weekend Update. The withdrawal of Harriet Miers' nomination for the Supreme Court (which was the opening sketch a few weeks back) was also covered.

There were two bits that caught my attention, the kinds of things that make me turn immediately to my wife and comment upon.

First, "Dick Cheney" said that Libby was found innocent of leaking the identity of a CIA agent to reporters. Fitzgerald took care in his 10/28 press conference to note that he was just bringing charges and that he would not give a full report as to what he had learned; Libby may be innocent about leaking the CIA agent's status, but the key is that Fitzgerald did not find enough evidence at this time to warrant bringing such charges against him.

Second, "Harriet Miers" who was criticized for lacking sufficient experience and familiarity with constitutional law to become a Supreme Court justice, questions the credentials of three other Bush administration officials. Such criticims are somewhat unfair. Porter Goss actually served in the CIA before becoming a congressman and now the CIA's head, Donald Rumsfeld did not serve in the army but did serve in the navy before becoming Secretary of Defense, and Michael Brown did serve in FEMA as general counsel before becoming its head.

See my footnotes here.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 10/30/2005 11:34:00 PM   

First Post

Welcome to the blog version of FootnoteTV. I started working on FootnoteTV back in early 2001 and began publishing it on-line in February 2002, and the site is now in its fourth year. Which means it's probably long past time for me to start blogging about it. I'll keep doing the site in its traditional form, but will also be using this blog to interact more. Let me know what you think.

I created FootnoteTV because I realized that many people were learning something about current events and issues from what they were watching on TV shows. My younger siblings did not see the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, but they did see Saturday Night Live's depiction of that debate and they knew that there was something funny about the word "lockbox." My friends were big fans of Law & Order and The Practice, and they kept asking me how realistic the courtroom depictions were. And I was a huge fan of The West Wing and was curious myself about some of the issues that the White House staffers debated and strategized over.

I started off just covering The West Wing and Saturday Night Live, but quickly expanded my beats to many other shows, including Law & Order, South Park, and many others. I also cover both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, which has been keeping my nights and/or mornings especially busy.

I do this entirely for free and in my spare time. I used to be a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and I'm now a litigator for the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, which has been ranked #1 on the American Lawyer’s 2005 "A-List" for two years (the firm, coincidentally, is the only real-life law firm to be mentioned on The West Wing in two episodes; Josh Lyman's father was supposedly a partner there). I live in New York with my wife, who is a violinist.

FootnoteTV has received some favorable reviews in the past. Yahoo! said that my "intelligent and lucid footnotes elevate TV from mere boob tube to a source of thoughtful discussion." Whitney Matheson of USAToday.com thought that the site could be "the next online phenomenon," which may have been a little optimistic. FootnoteTV has even been mentioned on the Today show and the New York Law Journal. Word of mouth does help, though, so please tell your friends about the site!

Thanks for visiting, and hope you keep coming back.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 10/30/2005 06:03:00 PM