I think we’re supposed to be rooting against the moderator at this point, but all I’m doing is rolling my eyes because the moderator seems to think that humanity and the ability to spew sound bites are the same thing. That was why they hated him until the day he died, he made it so the government was no longer officially preferring blonde whites over everyone else in the world for immigration. “Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world? Surely you aren’t going to say something stupid. She holds a sign. I think The Social Network is one of the best movies of the decade so far, I loved Steve Jobs, I think The West Wing, while flawed, was one of the greatest shows of all time during Sorkin’s tenure. Will then turns back to Jenny and says, “Now none of this is the fault of a twenty year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst, period, generation, period, ever, period.”, I could say that a baby boomer accusing any other generation of being “the worst ever” is almost exceedingly laughable. Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” Oh Jenny! One more prompt from Mac, and he finally explodes. Anything written about Aaron Sorkin's HBO series The Newsroom is a postmortem at this point.The series kicks off its third and final season tonight, dead but not done. Yeah, it's a nice rant, but he's also profoundly full of shit. But that's missing the bigger issue. I am aware of the obvious hypocrisy. I think Will, and by extension Sorkin’s heart is in the right place. I am aware of the fact that I am saying Will McAcoy is petty in the most petty way possible. Jenny, with your memes and your digital vinyl streaming and your Buzzfeed plaid button-up periscope-y internet trigger warnings! But hey, that’s just me. House impeachment managers are laying out... Sign and send the petition: COVID relief must be big & comprehensive. Because if there IS a good reason for your assertion you sure as hell didn't even TRY to make it clear here. Again, I agree with the sentiment. Apparently that’s the only reason one wouldn’t vote for a liberal candidate, and not anything else. Will sits in between a man and a woman, a conservative and a liberal respectively. The editing speeds up. If Will’s goal here is to raise the level of discourse in this country, piffling generational tribalism is definitely the way to start. Human beings have the uncanny ability to identify with anything so long as we have something to relate to. That doesn’t excuse treating your viewers like they’re stupid. When we bought and sold human beings as property? Sometimes, it feels like the cards are stacked against you, and you’re going to need to debase yourself a little to get motivated. His generational political rant (which, imo, is actually the less important of his unsubstantiated assertions, yet I can guarantee will draw the most comment and argument). Sorkin then goes on to dissect a scene from "The Newsroom," in which news anchor Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) loses it in typically eloquent Sorkin style while sitting on a … When? The moderator tries to change the subject again, but Will takes control and the rant truly begins. All of which is a very long way of saying that this article, about the opening scene of The Newsroom, is petty by design. That in the audience’s twenty or so years, they never questioned political norms or the society they live in. And a snarky comment about "...you, sorority girl. 1. Don’t get me wrong, I find a lot of the behavior of my fellow millennials to be as annoying and unproductive as everyone else. But that isn't "greatness" and no time before 1865 can anyone justify saying America was a "great" nation. You don't need to force it so much. And then turns around and does the exact same thing, himself. I also think that the context of every election differs, and there isn’t any one blanket reason why one party loses to another. Will begins the rant by attacking liberals. But I … Surely. “Can you say in one sentence or less— (Audience giggles)… You know what I mean. Smells like a bunch of Rose Colored Glasses Conservative Bullshit to me. The Newsroom is a new HBO series about the staff of a 24-hour news channel called Atlantis Cable News (ACN). A good answer, or at least a better answer than “Freedom and freedom.” But the moderator wants more. Since it's "The Newsroom's" last season I went back and watched the opening episode's fairly famous rant. Because if so, we’re also talking about the era of racial segregation and Vietnam. Daily Kos moves in solidarity with the Black community. Ideally, I would have rewatched the pilot rather than relying on Youtube clips so that I could offer you some narrative insights or something else that sounds good like that. 2. When we wouldn't allow women to vote? “The Newsroom” came to a close Sunday on HBO, and even after three seasons, this Aaron Sorkin series is still puzzling. I’ve seen most of Sorkin’s work. Look at how everyone in this scene is behaving, as if the notion that America isn’t the greatest country in the world never occurred to any them. He goes after the National Endowment of the Arts, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because it costs political capital and dumb conservative pundits can attack liberals at any moment with this apparent frivolous government spending. It’s a point expressed in a needlessly smug manner, but it’s a fair point nonetheless. Or maybe Sorkin is talking about the era he grew up in, where he saw such wonderful human advancements as the creation of indefinite poverty and mass incarceration. [to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. And it worked, it worked very well! What I’m talking about here is the heavy-handed nature of the set-up to the rant that’s about to happen. What a sexist, shitty, attempting-to-demean, thing to say to an adult woman who's attending a politics and media panel!) Will's professional idealism is put to the test with his new news team when they are first to cover the Deep Horizon platform oil spill. I could barely tolerate anything before this part of the scene, but this is the moment where I truly started to turn against the show. I am at peace with all of this. We use to look up to men of intelligence. Now? Oh Jenny, with your blonde hair and your big Bambi eyes and your millennial tweety insta-phone. Look closely enough and you might even see some strings. (As far as I’m concerned, Sorkin’s only absolute failure during his career so far was the campus rape episode.). He starts seeing flashes of Emily Mortimer. There are two primary assertions Jeff Daniel's character, news anchor Will McAvoy, makes in his rant. The series chronicles behind-the-scenes events at the fictional Atlantis Cable News (ACN) channel. Live Streaming. Eventually, however, he realizes that he would be trampling on everything he believes in, and as much as it may hurt sometimes, the same laws that enable the most hateful among us also enable the strongest. I could say that god forbid any of us millennials can’t live up to the great heights of tripping balls at Woodstock or electing Bush. Powered by Squarespace. (Link instead of embedding the video, 'cause, hey, surely everyone's actually seen the video, right?). Japan has freedom. The topic of the panel was never really clear to me, but it involves news anchors. This is a really unique show and I came to love it! Apologies for the blurriness of the screenshots. When? The pundits, the millennials, the debate, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, and Sorkin and director Greg Mottola, another great filmmaker led astray by The Newsroom, go almost hilariously out of their way to make sure you know that everything happening on-screen is utterly revolting. Directed by Greg Mottola. I also use way too many “to be” verbs and the universe is imperfect. I’ll assume they are, or at the very least, they were. Aaron Sorkin writes a nice rant for his character here, but I say he's full of crap on a his central points. 1. I don’t know if any of them are accurate. There’s a part of me that thinks that during his tenure at The Newsroom, Sorkin somehow became Toby Ziegler, only instead of going to war with white supremacists, he was going to war with the internet and all the ugliness it’s brought to the forefront. I am also aware that, according to McAvoy, I am part of the problem. An audience member asks Will what party he belongs to, and we learn that Will has never publicly stated his political affiliation. The inner cities became war zones and somewhere in a deep dark corner, Karl Rove and Lee Atwater were sharpening their fangs and feasting on virgin blood. You can feel the hand of the writer behind everything everyone says and does. Make social videos in an instant: use custom templates to tell the right story for your business. The millennials gasp. I have on my computer a big ol’ list of article ideas, and I’m running out of softballs. Inevitably people will argue generational politics instead of the question of America's "greatness" and Aaron's Sorkin's insistence that American "used to be" great and now isn't. I don’t want Sorkin ramming what I should be feeling down my throat. With Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher Jr., Alison Pill. Moderator [pause] You're saying— Will Yes. One staff member, Toby Ziegler, basically wants to throw out the bill of rights and the constitution in order to hunt down not just the white supremacists that almost killed the people he loved, but all white supremacists everywhere. I’m just not sure what era Will is specifically talking about. “We reached for the stars,” to quote one of the more prevalent Sorkinisms. The question of why in the hell he thinks he can assert America used to be great, at all. Sign and send the petition: Demand the Senate vote to convict and disqualify Donald Trump. Speaking as somebody who leans pretty far to the left, I don’t think the ability to campaign is the same thing as the ability to govern or effectively lead. 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 twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. So when Will says that “We fought for moral reasons. No. When our immigration laws were made up of quotas that allowed 100x as much legal immigration from northern European nations as from, say, Mexico or Kenya? Most of the time, however, it was just as shallow as the opening scene. That America used to be "great", though it no longer is. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day...". When we forced thousands, women and children, on the Trail of Tears so we could steal their gold? Contents. Sometimes, the show delivered on that promise. For some reason I now see it completely differently than I did the first time around. It’s not the greatest country in the world. It’s one thing to write about a movie you’ve seen a trillion times. I could say all that, and honestly, I don’t see any reason not to. You fucking assholes. She didn't even get the chance to vote for Obama's first run, only his second one, depending on where her birthday fell in 2012, the year this rant was recorded! Just how long do we get to coast on those five years of fighting the Nazi's and Imperial Japan, anyway? “And you, Sorority Girl, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there's some things you should know.” As you are guaranteed to get young people to listen to you by being condescending and sexist, he proceeds to list a bunch of statistics about America and our standing in the world. Canada has freedom. Surely you are not going to do this. “And with a straight face, you're gonna sit there and tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Since it's "The Newsroom's" last season I went back and watched the opening episode's fairly famous rant. 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