I think the connection I’m seeking between the Problem with Ehrenreich and the Problem with The West Wing may be something far more dangerous, and not at all literary/representational in nature:  I think the issue may well be the general—pardon the metaphor—flaccidity of thinking on the left these days.  After all the talk several years back (most of it in white circles, of course) about the vacuum of leadership in the African American community, I think the more pressing (and often unacknowledged) problem is the vacuum of national leadership on the left.  Who are we to imagine leading the charge for progressive reform, whether politically—Al Gore? Tom Daschle? Gray Davis?—or, for that matter, culturally—Michael Moore? Barbara Ehrenreich? Barbara Streisand?

I think my disheartenment (okay, I know, but is there an appropriate actually existing noun?) stems from finding two potentially radical moments of political engagement in U.S. culture watered down by their authors’ self-congratulatory assumption that they’ve already got “right” on their side, and thus don’t need to do anything more.

But now, of course, I’m re-heartened by trying to picture Ari Fleischer in a cropped t-shirt, maybe with a little belly-button ring…

Re Barbara Ehrenreich: my defense of her project notwithstanding, you are 100% right about the way the post-Tom Wolfe/Norman Mailer mode of journalism seems perpetually doomed to getting in the way of its own reason for being.  Even when the story is a good one, even when it’s well told, it’s more and more the case that, as you say, the narrator gets top billing, and his/her noodlings drown out all else.  And, as I said, I imagine the stage version you described as being an A-1 bad idea.

You’re also right about the West Wing, which entered serious senesence (sp?) a couple of weeks ago, when CJ was shown MCing some repellent Rock the Vote party at a House of Blues—they had her wearing a short t-shirt, fashionably showing bellybutton.

Now, I’m the last person to ask Allison Janney to cover up her midriff, but the PRESS SECRETARY OF THE WHITE HOUSE does not show belly.  Not in this universe, not yet.

It was a small thing—and all the faults you’ve named, Kathleen, are much more damning.  But for me it was a sign that all quality control has been lost.