The West Wing
Movie Quote Quiz

Leo McGarry: How are you doing, Ainsley?
Ainsley Hayes: [Nervous.] I'm concerned about peeing on your carpet.
Leo McGarry: Ok, well, now I am too.
Ainsley Hayes: Can I use your bathroom?
Leo McGarry: Sure.
[She walks into the closet.]
President Bartlet: Where is she?
Sam Seaborn: In the closet.
President Bartlet: Come on out Ainsley. What were you doing in the closet?
Ainsley Hayes: I had to pee.
President Bartlet: They wont let me smoke inside, but you can pee in Leo's closet.

Leo McGarry: You can sign the president's name?
Margaret: Yeah.
Leo McGarry: On a document removing him from power and giving it to someone else?
Margaret: Yeah. Or do you think the White House Counsel would say that's a bad idea?
Leo McGarry: I think the White House Counsel would say that's a Coup D'Etat.
Margaret: I'd probably end up doing some time for that.
Leo McGarry: I would think.

Toby: A hooker?
Sam: Call girl.
Toby: Oh, well that's a distinction that's going to be very important to the grand jury.

Josh: You know what, CJ? I really think I'm the best judge of what I mean, you paranoid Berkeley shiksa feminista. Wow, that was way too far.
C.J.: No. No. Well, I've got a staff meeting to go to and so do you, you elitist, Harvard, fascist, missed-the-dean's-list-two-semesters-in-a-row Yankee jackass.
Josh: Feel better getting that off your chest there, C.J.?
C.J.: I'm a whole new woman.

President Bartlet: I was watching a television program before, with a kind of roving moderator who spoke to a seated panel of young women who were having some sort of problem with their boyfriends - apparently, because the boyfriends had all slept with the girlfriends' mothers. And they brought the boyfriends out, and they fought, right there on television. Toby, tell me: these people don't vote, do they?

Pilot - S1-E1

Factual error: The Lockheed 1011 was only produced until 1984. There's no way that in 1999 Toby would be flying on one that "just came off the line 20 months ago."

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Trivia: Martin Sheen also played the President in the mini series "Kennedy" and in another character's vision in 1983's The Dead Zone.

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In Excelsis Deo - S1-E10

Question: This is as good a place to ask as any. In various US TV shows (including this one, and this episode), someone says "I could care less", when they always seem to mean "I couldn't care less", ie. they have no interest in what's going on. Surely if they COULD care less that means they actually care a reasonable amount? Is there any logic to this, or is it just a really annoying innate lack of sense?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: A really annoying innate lack of sense. My friends and family say the same thing all the time, and I'm endlessly trying to correct them. I think people just don't know any better and (ironically) couldn't care less that they're speaking incorrectly.

Answer: It's an endlessly annoying dropped negative, and it's been a common colloquialism for far too long. I believe it comes from an original (and now omitted and merely implied) "As if" preceding the statement. "As if I could care less." (Meaning "As if it were possible that I could care even less than I do.") But there's really no way to know.

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