This weekend, again, I decided to stay off Twitter, and binge The West Wing instead. (It’s now overdue again from the library. I should have just given them $10 when I picked it up.) Sometime on Saturday night, and on my (third) (??) glass of wine, I started watching the episode called “The Drop-In,” followed by “Bartlet’s Third State of the Union.” I started by jotting down some of the better dialogue because I was cackling through the entire thing, basically. So what follows are my transcribed handwritten notes in italics, along with some random observations in parentheses.

 

BARTLET: “Leo, were you born at the age of 55?” (Leo apparently had never read the “Peanuts” comic strip. Yes, I get he’s a TV character, but honestly. That’s ridiculous.)

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dude from Police Academy movies. (OK, this was Tackleberry! Who knew he got more work after “Police Academy?”)

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“It shall be the unequivocal opinion of the United States government that global warming presents a clear and present danger to the health and future well-being of this planet and all its inhabitants.” That was silly Sam Seaborn. Obviously, as we all now know, global warming is some sort of liberal scam.

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Donna thinks Lord John Marbury is handsome. I mean

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JOSH: Can I have her for a second?
CJ: Why did you ask him (Toby) and not me?
JOSH: He looked in charge!
CJ: Of where I go?
(Incidentally, CJ is a boss and you are not!

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BARTLET: Sweden has a 100 percent literacy rate, Leo. How do they do that?
LEO: Maybe they don’t and they also can’t count.

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BARTLET: They’re gonna come at me with vegan food and pitchforks.
CHARLIE: That doesn’t really sound like something people really do.
BARTLET: Still, I’d like you to get in the way of me and any boiled seaweed you see coming my way.

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Black man couldn’t get a break with Democrats either. #funnyjokesmatter (OK, this was the black comedian who made the joke about cops killing black people and he had to back out of hosting a Dem fundraiser event because the president laughed at the joke.

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Lord John Marbury is growing on me.

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Yo, we have never had a dumber TV president than the real president we have now.

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Ted McGinley is basically timeless. (and impervious to age! How do you have the same exact face in 2000 as you do did on “The Love Boat in the ’80s?)

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It’s a really good thing I’m not in Congress right now because I’d be throwing popcorn at Trump during his State of the Union. Just petty like that. Booing like a mo-FOOO!

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Ainsley came out of the basement to trash the White House. “… not 100 percent constitutional?” (GIRL.)

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Corbin Bernsen has been acting for at least 30 years. His mother is a friggin’ soap icon. He can’t drink out of a clearly empty mug without giving the game away?

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Why are women losing their clothing items in odd ways? (CJ did a TV segment without pants. (Still a boss.) Ainsley’s walking around the White House basement in a bathrobe. (Wondering if she’ll eventually run into Mandy down there …) Donna and the underwear. OK, confession time. That one actually almost happened to me. OK, it did happen to me. I was just still at home, mercifully.)

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Donald Trump is going to have to give a SOTU address. That’s cool. Because I think we know the state of our union. It’s very good. Many people have said it’s the best state and the best union in many, many years. Believe me. We’re working on great things. I make deals and we’re going to change how we’re doing things. We need to win again. So the SOTU is very, very, very good, I think and many fine people agree.
Many people are saying we have the statiest union we’ve ever had.
(I can’t believe I didn’t get “drain the swamp” in there somewhere.

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Women are second-class citizens on West Wing, too. Not great when you’re worried about political blowback over something called the Violence Against Women act.

The last few weeks have been tough. You could make the argument that all the weeks have been tough since the presidential election.

But lately, Donald Trump had apparently taken his meds and flushed them down the toilet, then taken the toilet and had it demolished. Then there was the mass shooting in Las Vegas that left me sad and bereft of all hope that anything would be done this time. There were the awful allegations about Harvey Weinstein and reading about them made me physically recoil from my computer screen. Bu t really, it might have been Cam Newton that had me running and screaming from social media for the first time.

The chaos that erupted from the realization that the reporter Newton was accused of belittling had sent out racist tweets of her own raised some eye-opening and frustrating discussions among women. And not eye-opening as in enlightening. I watched white women stand up with this reporter when she was targeted by Newton, then poo-poo her past tweets like they were no big deal, and as those discussions escalated on Friday, I decided that was about it for me. I told myself I wasn’t going to go onto Facebook or Twitter for the entire weekend. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, on account of the fact that I check Twitter roughly 500 times a day, and in my head, I thought it wouldn’t last, but I did it. I told myself that instead of checking those sites, I would do something else. Like what, you ask? I thought you would never ask:

1. I read a book. I finished “Misery” by Stephen King, a book I thought I had already read, but I definitely had not. Mini-review: Far more disturbing than the movie. Hobbling was not what it was with Kathy Bates, that is for sure. I had been reading at a measured pace before, but with no real restraints, I finished the book on Saturday, and found at the end that I had finished reading it on the same date that King finished writing it. Creepy! I finally finished “Birth of a Nation,” a book about the making of and the fallout from the eponymous movie from 1915 that I began reading earlier this year. I learned a lot while reading it, including about the relationship between Booker T. Washington and crusading editor Monroe Trotter (who led the unsuccessful fight to get the movie out of theaters). There’s an essay in there somewhere that pertains to today’s current state of affairs, I think.
2. I did some writing. I’ve been working on a secret (for now, anyway) project and I had been wondering if it was winding to a close because I didn’t have anything else to say and over the weekend, I found that I had actually quite a bit to say. So it’s going to stay a secret a bit longer.
3. I took my kids to the library. Plot twist: They just wanted to be on the computer the whole time.
4. I got organized. I have a content calendar for my tennis blog! I have a bullet journal! I came up with freelance project ideas. I also cleaned my house, which is a big one, guys.

The next weekend, I boycotted Twitter after a spontaneous call for one emerged after the company temporarily suspended Rose McGowan, who apparently violated the terms of service while she was sounding the alarm on Weinstein. But mainly, the situation showed that the company has several problems, most significantly its failure to enforce its TOS equally. But what does Twitter do? It gives people more characters with which to tweet. Actually, the boycott was on Friday and I thought I would try the weekend break again. Three days off Twitter and I felt like I had a new brain. Plus, my anxiety levels were down. There really should be some type of scientific study, because I think I got smarter being off social media.

Being off Twitter helped me get at something I’ve been feeling for a while. I used to read stories all the way through, even when I first joined Twitter. I would read it and if I liked it, I would share it. Back in the day, you’d read a story and discuss it at the dinner table or at school (yes, my friends and I were nerds like that). Now, everything is coming at you at the same time, and you know headlines, but little else. This is literally the worst time in history to not be fully informed. And you know what? Old-school as it might seem, maybe going to the main source — a reliable newspaper or TV station — is not such a bad idea and (now clutch the pearls) might be worth the money for a subscription?

One more thing happened: I asked myself why I’m always on Twitter. It started as a way to stay sane after the election because there were millions of other people out there who thought Trump was a bad idea and we could communicate. And the crazier this administration acted, the more I was on social media, getting affirmation that yes, this is absolutely nuts. It’s good to have that, but it’s better to think about and engage in ways to change your community, because change starts locally before it gets a big stage. So I’m thinking the Twitter weekend breaks (and maybe now weeknight breaks) are going to continue for a while.

I think I’ll use that time to get this scientific study going, because seriously, someone should look into the effects of Twitter on your brain.