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The Spectacle Blog
In the HBO drama “Newsroom,” of which I’ve caught snippets, Jeff Daniels plays an apostle of light, showing a fearless fidelity to the facts as an anchorman exhausted with ratings-driven trivialities. His bottomless integrity leads him to defend the honor of “primaried” Republicans like Bob Bennett, who was the “most conservative” member of the Senate, according to the anchor (this should gives viewers an idea of what his character considers “facts”). Daniels’s character is outraged at crazies within the Tea Party movement who are so addled that they would knock off a worthy conservative like Bennett. Emily Mortimer plays his British-born producer who eggs him on in his crusades, whispering such profundities into his ear as “nothing is more important than a well-informed electorate.” The British are coming, the British are coming, to save our democracy! Sam Waterson plays the flawed but sage executive pleased at his ratings-be-damned news team. He informs his boss played by Jane Fonda that “Media Matters” approved of a recent broadcast. Playing mildly against type, Fonda is concerned that the show is insufficiently respectful to the new Republican Congress and to the rich. After all, she “has business” before these guys and might find herself seated next to one of the Koch brothers at a Manhattan party. So greed, not fairness, is her basis for asking Waterson to tell his news team to “tone” it down. Aaron Sorkin is the “mind” behind this show and it is not a very interesting one: every concept he mouthes through his characters flows from the arrogant assumption that liberalism is the font of all wisdom and thus should serve as the arbiter of any story’s or debate’s parameters. This is “balance.”
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More Blog Posts by George Neumayr
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/07/11/dumb-and-dumber-jeff-daniels-a
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solidground| 7.11.12 @ 12:13PM
The mere presence of Hanoi Jane in any movie or TV show deters me from watching it. I will not contribute to that woman's income or the income of those responsible for creating any program in which she appears.
JmsA| 7.11.12 @ 1:25PM
Hear. Hear.
J.C.Eaton| 7.11.12 @ 2:09PM
What they said.
Robert19711| 7.11.12 @ 7:29PM
So you watched "snippets" and decided to write a thorough, balanced review. Makes sense.
Reggie Love| 7.11.12 @ 8:10PM
Daniels should stick to toilet scenes.
RJ| 7.12.12 @ 12:07AM
I don't find much of current television entertaining and that which is ideologically hostile or condescending, just makes it worse. For me, some of the old shows from the 1960s-80s are more entertaining, but often my television isn't on for weeks.
D. Smith | 7.12.12 @ 12:55PM
When you're arguing with people who think the world is flat, there is no need for "balance."
John Galt | 7.12.12 @ 1:21PM
I don't see it that way, and as you can tell by my nom de plume, I'm about as anti-liberal and anti-socialist as one can be.
I view the show through a lens that takes into account who Sorkin is and what he does. If you view the show with a commitment to process everything without knee-jerk reaction to the "liberal media", then there is much to admire.
First, the very concept is one that we MUST support and applaud. Sorkin has targeted the death of news reporting and aims to show us how it could be done. From the conservative side, this is an outstanding turn of events, and I for one am thrilled to hear the quick machine-gun dialogue aimed at ripping the modern state of television news.
Second, we've all seen the reactions to the scene in which Jeff Daniels' character delivers a rebuke of a student's assertion that the U.S. is the "greatest country". Most on the conservative side have decided to complain and view this as a liberal attack. It is not. The most American thing we can --and should -- do is to use our First Amendment rights to assertively point out problems. Some incorrect numbers notwithstanding, the assault on America's standing in the world is dead on.
Finally, the left-leaning dialogue is sometimes so hokey that it's easy to ignore. Filter it out through the aforementioned lens, and the show becomes pretty good. What's not to like about a television program exposing the disastrous joke that American "news" programs have become.