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Side show
By SHARON FINK, Times Staff Writer IT'S PARTY TIME: West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is throwing a Bush bash. In the New Yorker, he calls last month's NBC special The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing an undeserved "valentine" to George W. And he says The West Wing's fictional president will run for re-election against the fictional governor of Florida, "who's not the sharpest tool in the box but who's raised a lot of money and is very popular with the Republican Party." * * * AND AARON HAS SOME MORE HE'D LIKE TO SAY: In talking about the NBC special, Sorkin gets on a roll like the one Bluto hits near the end of Animal House -- the one in which he tries to rally the frat with "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Sorkin not only slams Bush, he slams NBC, which broadcasts West Wing, and NBC's No. 1 news anchor, Tom Brokaw, who hosted the special. He says Brokaw let the White House pump up the president's schedule on the day the special was filmed so Bush would look "much busier and more engaged than he is." There's no conspiracy here. NBC publicly admitted from the start that Bush's schedule was pumped up, so viewers could get a good look at the variety of things a president does in a day. That's been the network's procedure for similar presidential specials Brokaw has done, going back to Richard Nixon. But forget it, Sorkin's rolling. "The show was a valentine to Bush," he says. Cue speed metal background music . . . "That illusion may be what we need right now, but the truth is we're simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage at the World Series by throwing out the first pitch, or that he, by God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City and jumbling the first line of the Olympic ceremony. The media is waving pompoms, and the entire country is being polite." Not the entire country, obviously. Sorkin does have praise for Bush. Sort of. He says he thinks the president is handling the country's situation well and that "it's absolutely right that at this time we're all laying off the bubblehead jokes." * * * MAYBE THEY'RE JUST GOING TO SHARE WITH BUFFY: UPN officials keep saying Roswell hasn't been canceled. But one of the series stars, Majandra Delfino (Maria), writes on her Web site that the network ordered the sets torn down last week. This a "bahhhd sign for you Roswell lovers," she says. * * * TRUE LOVE: Singer LeAnn Rimes got married last weekend to dancer Dean Sheremet in Dallas. Rimes, 19, and Sheremet, 21, met last May and got engaged in December. You can follow their time together in pictures at her Web site, Rimestimes.com, and learn that he went through with the wedding even though she once gave him a snowboard with a life-size picture of herself painted on it. * * * NO MARKET RESEARCH NEEDED: In a perfect example of a celebrity matching a charity to her fan base, the WWF's Mighty Molly appeared on Monday night's Fear Factor to win money for a prison ministries group.
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From the wire |
