Crackpots

My lovely friend, former roommate, and current West Wing fan Molly, and I recently started a podcast where we summarize West Wing episodes with a focus on the actual policy involved. The name, appropriately enough, is West Wing Best Wing, and the second episode is out now! 

This week, we discussed Episode 5, The Crackpots and These Women, which introduced the famous Big Block of Cheese Day. Well, technically Andrew Jackson introduced this practice, by putting an actual 1,400 pound block of cheese in the lobby of the White House for everyone to eat.

If you've been to DC in the summer, you can imagine how bad this must have smelled.

We found out that this wasn't just a block of cheese that sat there for days, it was actually used for a public party, which gave me peace of mind, since there weren't any refrigerators in the Jackson White House.

On the show, Leo McGarry, the fake chief of staff, institutes Big Block of Cheese Day so that the senior staff in the White House can meet with people they wouldn't otherwise hear from. This takes the form of C.J. Cregg, fake press secretary, and Sam Seaborn, fake communications director, taking meetings with fringe environmental groups, and UFO believers.

I can confirm that crackpots don't need any help from cheese.

What many people don't know is that there is a Big Block of Cheese Day in real life! Every so often, real White House senior staff and cabinet secretaries use social media to take questions from ordinary people and hear concerns. This gives the White House and the executive branch a chance to connect with their constituents, and allows staffers to make a variety of cringe-worthy cheese puns. 

To learn more about the real Big Block of Cheese Day, as well as where the President actually goes in a nuclear attack, and a crash course on Senator Joseph McCarthy and 1990s basketball attire, listen to the full episode of West Wing, Best Wing!

And if you have any episodes you want us to address, put them in the comment section of this post!