14 Historical Inaccuracies In The West Wing You Totally Missed
Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong
Few political dramas have ever captured the imagination of the public quite like The West Wing. Running for seven seasons, with 156 episodes in all, the programme brought American politics to the fore and also revolutionised the filming of television shows with its famous walk-and-talk scenes. The brainchild of creator Aaron Sorkin, the programme was set in the West Wing of the White House, with the series following fictional Democratic President Josiah Bartlet and his political staff during their two-terms in office and it ran between 1999 and 2006. An extremely well-researched show, The West Wing proved extremely informative as well as throughly entertaining and captivating. But, as with any series that reach more than 150 episodes in all, some factual and historical errors did manage to slip through the researchers' nets. For example, Communications Director Toby Ziegler declares the "incredible history" of second inaugural presidential addresses, yet manages to reference the wrong speech. Also, Chief-of-Staff Leo McGarry incorrectly asserts that the US "spent millions of dollars" creating a zero-gravity pen that astronauts could use. And even the super-smart, PhD-educated Nobel laureate President Bartlet makes some factual errors in the show, including when referring to the language in which the epic poem Beowulf was written. So here are 14 historical and factual inaccuracies in The West Wing that you probably missed while watching the show...