Okay, every once in a while I feel really guilty about taking a pretty awesome West Wing domain name from people who might actually use it to talk about the West Wing, and instead I just use it as my personal blog. My tumblr/lj/youtube/twitter name, LymanLover, isn’t super obvious but if you know Josh you know what I mean.
Anyhow, I’ll always love talking about the West Wing, so thank you for the question anon!
I’m not sure about a Big Block of Cheese month, but on the show the chief of staff, Leo McGarry, advocated Big Block of Cheese days. While they were supposed to happen once a month, we only had two episodes featuring these days and the characters themselves admit that they can often go long stretches without doing these days.
Anyway, Big Block of Cheese days were Leo’s tribute to Andrew Jackson. He would always start the days off with a staff meeting and this speech (and I love getting to make this speech). Andrew Jackson had in his white house a two ton block of cheese, there for any and all who wished an audience.
In this spirit, Leo would use these days to assign meetings to senior staff with people and organizations that would not usually get the ear of the white house. Notable examples include World Bank protestors and my personal favorites which were assigned to CJ, the Press Secretary - wildlife advocates who wanted a wolves only highway, and my personal favorite, Cartographers for Social Equality.
(Fun Fact: the incredible Nick Offerman aka Ron Swanson of Parks & Rec is one of the wolf advocates. Talk about a 180 from Ron. Definitely worth a watch.)
I loved both the episodes because they’re notably pretty funny even though they have their dark tones throughout. While the idea isn’t feasible in government today, the spirit that they’re done in is noble.
