I was always a fan of TheWest Wing. Now it turns out that one of the pranks I initiated at Spy inspired an episode. In the January 1993 issue, we pulled a prank on incoming Congressmen, interviewing them with a series of stupid questions that culminated with a solicitation of their opinion of what to do about the crisis in Fredonia, which, as movie buffs know, isn’t a real country, but the fake nation where the Marx Brothers masterpiece Duck Soup takes place. All the congressmen rattled off some automatic answer about how they deplored the situation and hoped that it would improve very soon. As my friend and former colleague Josh Gillette reports, on an episode of The West Wing Podcast, script writer Eli Attie acknowledged that in 2005, he used that prank as the premise, in part, for the 14th episode of season 6, also called Fredonia. So where are the royalties? Josh also points out that one respondent was Jay Inslee, now running for president.
