Center Square | Farewell, 'West Wing'; you were a Blue-State fantasy

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, May, 2006 | by Chris Satullo

About 9 tonight, a bunch of Blue-Staters will be feeling mighty blue. Josiah Bartlet's presidency will be kaput. George W. Bush's will have 981 days to go.

The West Wing, the often superb television drama that for seven seasons provided a fictional alternative to a real-world Capitol mired in deficits, dysfunction and demonization, ends its run tonight.

No doubt, the show's brainy Democratic president, played by Martin Sheen, often served as a fantasy refuge for liberals driven mad by the Age of W.

No doubt, for that same reason, many conservatives dismissed the show as yet another mean-spirited emanation from a hopelessly partisan Hollywood.

At its best, The West Wing was far more subtle, interesting and useful than that.

The show's creator,...