The West Wing, Bolivia, the CIA, and my Parking Space Hero

I just received an email today from a friend of mine in California about an episode of the TV show The West Wing. Since we don’t own a television set I don’t exactly watch the show regularly, but as a political junkie, I catch it when I can while traveling to the US. I’d vote for Martin Sheen any day, ever since the afternoon in Santa Monica a good twenty years ago when he gave me his parking space. You just know George Bush is not the kind of guy who would give away his parking space without charging for it.

Back to The West Wing. According to my friend, they just did an episode in which, “The White House crisis is about U.S. involvement in Bolivia -- CIA operatives posing as engineers are held by the people which creates a crisis for the President.” Way to go West Wing! Imagine, tossing a little questioning of the US presence here into the Hollywood mix.

But then the show did something unbelievably goofy. If you go to the program’s Web site, to the section called Hot Topics, where they have links to where viewers can get more information on the topics in the show (here it is), the information source they link to for more information on Bolivia is…The CIA!! Really, you have to check this out.

So I have just written to the producers of the show and suggested that as an alternative, or at least a slight offset to the CIA, they might add a link to the country profile on Bolivia that I has published last year in the fine British monthly, The New Internationalist. You can view that article here.

I know that if my good old parking space buddy, the alternative Commander-in Chief, Martin Sheen, knew about this he would not be happy. So if you’d like to add your voice to mine on this, send along a note of your own to the fine people at The West Wing. The email address is:

TheWestWing@nbc.com

I’ll keep you posted.