Do minor inaccuracies about politics/history in news, movies or TV shows bother you?

[President Johnson]

Do "minor" inaccuracies about politics/history in news articles, movies or TV shows bother you? Or basically on any topic you have advanced knowledge of?

Some examples:

- Newspaper article says "Barack Obama was president from 2008 to 2016"; or "the senate and congress both voted in favor of XY Act."
- House of Cards claiming there's a special election for governor of Pennsylvania in 2013. There are no special elections for governor in that state. After Jim Matthews' resignation, his lt. governor would just have taken over until the 2014 election (if 2013 was necessary, why didn't they use Virginia instead?). Also, their 2016 map is laughable. I think they also got it wrong that Will Conway was elected governor of New York in 2012, though New York doesn't elect the governor in presidential years.
- In the movie The American president with Michael Douglas, it's always mentioned that it's an "election year". However, at some point there's Christmas and then the State of the Union Address in the final scene. Obviously, this is not possible since elections are in November.
- In the TV show Designated Survivor, apparently there's a regular presidential election in 2019. I thought maybe the election cycle is different in that universe, but Ross Perot 1992 is at one time explicitly mentioned.


It's kinda nerdy, but such inaccuracies somehow always bother me. I always wonder whether film makers and alike couldn't check that out in advance, it's no so hard to find information these days. However, I only complain about that in private, if at all, because I don't want to come off as wise guy to people not knowing me that much.

Is it just me who even notices that?

[President Johnson]

- House of Cards claiming there's a special election for governor of Pennsylvania in 2013. There are no special elections for governor in that state. After Jim Matthews' resignation, his lt. governor would just have taken over until the 2014 election (if 2013 was necessary, why didn't they use Virginia instead?). Also, their 2016 map is laughable. I think they also got it wrong that Will Conway was elected governor of New York in 2012, though New York doesn't elect the governor in presidential years.

If we're looking for inaccuracies about politics in House of Cards, then these barely even register. For one, if we take the idea that the show's world is supposed to be close to our own seriously (for some reason), then Frank Underwood, a white Southern Democrat who loves the idea of taking on teachers' unions and 'reforming' Social Security, would have lost no later than 2010 and would presumably now be a very frustrated lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.

Another thing in House of Cards that was just ridiculous was when Frank got the House Republicans and Congressional Black Caucus to team up to usurp the Speaker of the House to vote for a different Democrat?

Just laughably absurd on so many levels.


And this is a minor thing but in Ozark, Wendy repeatedly calls Missouri a swing state, and the show takes place in the late 2010s.

Absolutely. I also remember a scene from the 2016 Democratic Convention, in which someone is referred to as "senator" and from Kentucky. As if Kentucky elected a Democratic senator in the 2010s.

[President Johnson]

When there's election maps that make no sense, that pisses me off so much.

Yeah, in that respect, Veep's election map was decent (although WTF Delaware??)


Compare this to the 2006 West Wing election:

That's even worse than the 2016 House of Cards map, lmao: