Thanks, I Hate It: The Newsroom

It's rare that one can look at a man and know beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that he has done material damage to the psychological functioning of an entire nation. Aaron Sorkin is that man. His hit series The West Wing induced a kind of national delusion about the nature of politics while also fostering a bizarrely sunny outlook on the things big government could do and the ideals it stood for. His followup series, The Newsroom, which aired on HBO from 2012 to 2014, may lack The West Wing's pernicious social penetration, but what it lacks in malignant influence it more than makes up for in stupidity.

The conceit of The Newsroom is that it's set several years in the past but, of course, written by people with hindsight on the real-world events it covers. Rather than using their future standpoint to engage in a nuanced examination of these events, though, Sorkin opts to make his news anchor protagonist, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), 100% right about everything.  Will is supernaturally reasonable, a moderate Republican of the kind which only exists inside Aaron Sorkin's brain, and to make matters worse other characters are constantly second-guessing him or criticizing his snap judgments about current events. Then, inevitably, they're proven wrong for doing so.

The unbelievable arrogance of the show's premise is bad enough to ruin a dozen programs, but Sorkin doesn't stop there. To give you an idea of what the music on The Newsroom is like, there's an episode with a montage set to Coldplay's 'Fix You' and when Sorkin discovered the montage ran longer than the song...he had the song extended. There is a seven minute and sixteen second-long version of 'Fix You' on this show. The camera is Sorkin's usual sentimental mess, lingering from low angles on sad men with outlandishly gorgeous love interests and panning clumsily around the most uninteresting sights imaginable. That the whole thing is set in a glass and plastic labyrinth of a television studio doesn't help much.

But where the real horror of The Newsroom lives is in its dialogue. Sorkin's scripts are unbelievably soppy, dripping with scorn for young people and their culture, unabashedly and uncomplicatedly nostalgic for the America of yesteryear. Its characters always state, declare, refute; there's no normal conversation on the show because none of these people is a normal human. They're broken vending machines dispensing whatever polemic Sorkin loads them with, which ranges from diatribes about free speech to an impassioned defense of the rights of campus rapists. Lest you think I'm kidding, what follows is unedited dialogue from the series' pilot.

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“Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world? It’s not the greatest country in the world. That’s my answer…

[turns to a panelist] 

Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always? [turns to another panelist] And with a straight face, you’re gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom! So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom. 

[turns to the student who asked the question] 

And yeah, you… sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there’s some things you should know. One of them is: there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Yosemite?!

[Silence]

It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”

― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom, Episode 1