And That's The Way It Is

After giving Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show The Newsroom a thumbs down, I thought I'd give it another chance.  Some shows take a while to find their way.  I'm sorry to say the latest episode, "The 112th Congress," was worse than the pilot.  Almost unbelievably bad.

The show, you'll recall, is set in 2010.  This week the news team concentrated on the Tea Party.  If you don't mind plots built around old news, you could do a decent show about the subject, even a very critical one--for example, a look at whether or not their influence has been helpful to the Republican Party.

Instead, all we got was a barrage of Democrat talking points.  Most of these points weren't that great to begin with, but even the decent ones had answers which any intelligent conservative could give.  But that's not how The Newsroom works.  The Tea Party representatives were, to a person, idiots.  So anchor Will McAvoy could make his simplistic arguments unchallenged.

I was going to say this show doesn't even have the pretense of objectivity, but that's the problem--the whole premise is that this is what the news, reported honestly and objectively, would look like.

In fact, this episode starts with a speech (stunningly stupid, though his crew laps it up) where McAvoy, on the air, apologizes for his past work and promises from now on he will concentrate on the real news and tell it honestly with full context.  This may sound good, but "full context" in Aaron Sorkin's world means we will learn why Democrats are right about everything and an honest Republican has no choice but to agree.

I would hope self-respecting people of all political viewpoints can agree this show is just plain awful.