The West Wing, and Why I Haven’t Been Watching
I love The West Wing. Always have.
But I haven’t been watching it lately. Yes, it was overly optimistic — but it hurts to see how far we’ve drifted from that ideal.
Still, it’s a show that shaped how I think. About leadership. About pacing. About how structure creates clarity.1
The Poker Scene
There’s a scene where the senior staff is playing poker and President Bartlet challenges them to name all fourteen types of punctuation. Toby rattles them all off.
Me? I’ll happily plant my flag on the em dash.
I don’t care that it shows up all over my writing. I don’t care if someone calls it a “dead giveaway.” I’d be using it anyway — because I love the way it mirrors the rhythm of how I actually speak.
The AI Parallel
That’s why I’m fine with using AI in writing too.
It doesn’t erase my voice. It doesn’t cheapen the story. It just helps me get there faster, while keeping the cadence that feels like me. The em dash. The beat. The lived voice.
So yes, AI sometimes drops in an em dash where a period might do. Good. That’s how I’d write it anyway.2
Where the Real Work Still Is
Because the work isn’t in whether I used an em dash or whether AI drafted a sentence scaffold. The work is:
Finding the pain. The knot worth untangling.
Building the fix. The clarity, the workflow, the lesson that makes it better.
That’s the part you can’t fake. That’s the part no tool can do for you.
Takeaway
So yes: I say yay to Toby, yay to The West Wing, yay to the em dash.
And I say yay to using AI in writing. Not because it hides my voice, but because it gives me more room to do the real work.
Be proud of it. Because you’re doing the work.
Yes, written with AI — but the ideas, frustrations, and experiments are all mine. That’s the point.
Find the pain. Build a fix. That’s the work.