Review — "The West Wing" debate

I suspect someone's head will roll ... or at least they will have a big headache today.

While "The West Wing's" presidential debate Sunday night was positive on many fronts, NBC goofed big time in one important respect: The network should never have allowed the producers to use the NBC News logo on the screen.

Shades of the 1938 Martian attack! Some people tuning in would have thought they were watching a real presidential debate. As a newspaper editor, I am regularly asked, "Who do we vote for this year?" We have no election in our part of the woods this year! It is the one year in five our county has no election!

So, if local folks can't keep track of elections, much less who is running, how confused will the NBC News broadcast of "The West Wing" make them? I can almost guarantee that someone will have said last night, "I'm voting for that Arnold Vinnick" or "I'm voting for that Santos guy."

Now, enough of that. What was positive about the "debate"?

Amazingly, the touchy-feely people story was totally submerged in the issues that were debated. And those issues need to be considered in the real world: education reform, tax reform, energy and illegal immigration.

If the fake debate can get people interested in the real issues, we will all be so much better off.

Real-life newsman Forrest Sawyer has always impressed me, but I think he found his calling as an actor!

Oh, one other comment -- Ellen Degeneres should sue whoever produced her spots during the boradcast for American Express. Then, AMEX should fire their ad agency.

Degeneres is very talented and, given good material, can be funny. But she had nothing to work with in the filmed commercials she did during the show. Obviously they were not pre-screened by someone in a position to say, "We can't run this -- it's awful!"