Conclusion

Abstract

In the middle of a crisis in the Middle East and a political crisis at home, which included the kidnapping of his daughter by terrorists from ‘Qumar’ and a situation of ‘high alert’ over Washington and much of the US, the fictional President Bartlett of The West Wing (a US political TV drama) hears that a bomb scare has meant that a group of citizands, mostly from ‘Arab countries’ have had their swearing of the citizenship oath cancelled. In response to this, he says to his aide, ‘We’re talking folks who have been interviewed and background-checked by two agencies, taken classes to learn our language, passed exams on our history and government, and been fingerprinted twice; these are the kinds of Arabs we’re talking about?’¹ When his aide says ‘Yes’, he is instructed to find an auditorium somewhere to hold the ceremony. At the end of a difficult day, at the end of the episode, he is called to see the ceremony in fact taking place within the White House. He leads the Pledge of Allegiance, and the words of the pledge play over shots of his wife and daughter getting into a limo to leave the White House to go to their country residence, away from the trauma of the kidnapping, the daughter with her head on her mother’s lap.