Maureen Dowd's latest column is #1 on the New York Times most-emailed list (aka 'MEL'), but technically it's not all hers — this week, she offered up her editorial-page real estate to West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, whose idealistic vision of the White House had a little more traction than his idealistic vision of "Saturday Night Live" (think it killed him to see "30 Rock" clean up with all those Emmys last night? But that's another story).
Dowd had Sorkin construct a magical dialogue between West Wing president Jed Bartlett who made a non-partisan appearance in the form of Martin Sheen on last night's Emmys) and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, like so:
BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.
BARTLET Senator.
OBAMA Mr. President.
BARTLET You seem startled.
OBAMA I didn't expect you to answer the door yourself.
BARTLET I didn't expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks "The Flintstones" was based on a true story, so let's call it even.
Zing! And on it went in that vein.
Obama has been linked with Sorkin characters in the past — first to up-and-coming West Wing presidential candidate Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits), and more recently to Sorkin's fictional president Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) in The American President, following Obama's DNC speech at Invesco Field, which had commentators like Keith Olbermann and Brian Williams drawing that comparison and which MTV deconstructed to show point-by-point similarities. Also, Obama apparently once said to Sorkin, "My intention is to steal a lot of your lines."
So, via MoDo, Sorkin gave him one more speech to steal — and it's been burning up MEL ever since. (If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about; if not, the gist is "GET ANGRIER" and Google will take care of the rest.)
But anyway! On the topic of loans, I shall now segue back to my headline, because when I saw how MoDo had loaned out her column inches to Sorkin it reminded me of how she'd done that a year ago, offering up her column to Stephen Colbert with his "I Am Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)" A year later, it still holds up. I think it hit #1 on MEL, too.
More From This Sunday's NYT:
Sunday's NYT: The Drive-By Edition [FishbowlNY]
Related In Video Clips:
Speech From "The American President' [YouTube]