How To Subvert The Newsroom
How To Subvert The Newsroom
Dissecting Sorkin's subtle subversion in the opening monologue of HBO's "The Newsroom" and the fall of Hollywood from artistry to hackery
Comrades: The Newsroom is fully demoralized.
In 2012, Aaron Sorkin turned HBO’s The Newsroom into his personal soapbox. Jeff Daniels starred as his mouthpiece, anchor Will McAvoy. Like Sorkin’s hit show The West Wing, The Newsroom was designed to stroke the egos and erogenous zones of limousine liberals. They groomed our theater kid government. The opening monologue went viral because it captured their moral posturing before it metastasized into woke culture; perhaps the whole show was created just to deliver those lines. The same language, attitude, and tone are used by every MSM anchor and late night show host like Maddow, Hayes, Cooper, Tapper, Muir, Colbert, Stewart, Oliver, etc. Allow me to provide spicy translation and commentary for Sorkin’s sophisticated subversive agitprop.
Here is the full 5-minute scene:
STUDENT: Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?
LIB PANELIST: Diversity and opportunity.
CON PANELIST: Freedom and freedom, so let’s keep it that way.
WILL: The New York Jets.
AUDIENCE: *laughs*
A staple of leftist entertainment is to caricature conservative characters as dumb, bombastic tools. The Jets joke is forced sardonic laughter. Oh he made a funny about sportsball, such a man of the people!
MODERATOR: No, I’m going to hold you to an answer on that. What makes America the greatest country in the world?
WILL: Well, Louis and Sharon said it, diversity and opportunity, and freedom and freedom.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER HOLDS UP SIGN: It’s not. But it can be.]
MODERATOR: I’m not letting you go to the airport without answering the question.
WILL: Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece. James Madison was a genius. The Declaration of Independence is for me, the single greatest piece of American writing. You don’t look satisfied…
MODERATOR: One’s a set of laws, the other is a declaration of war. I want a human moment from you. What about the people?
The dramatic pause with emotional music is foreplay for the orgasmic release to follow. Most college students have no idea what the Constitution is. Campuses and Democrats are now strongly against the First and Second Amendments.
WILL: It's not the greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer.
MODERATOR: You're saying—
WILL: Yes.
MODERATOR: Let's talk about—
WILL: Fine. [to lib panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to con panelist] 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 fuckin' smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!
Will described conservatives, not liberals. When The Newsroom premiered in 2012, Obama was about to handily win a second term over Mitt Romney. The smug left was culturally dominant. Yet even at the peak of their powers, they still whined about being the victims and The Resistance. At least he acknowledges that teachers unions like the NEA and Randi Weingarten are losers.
WILL: And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so starspangled 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. 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.
Canada has freedom? That’s laughable in 2024, but it remains the foil for libs who want to flee America. The UK is currently throwing people in jail for memes and “hate speech”. Australia had the most draconian COVID policies on the planet outside of China. France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Belgium have surrendered their sovereignty to the Eurocrats. No serious person could argue that 180 countries have true freedom. There are 18 at best.
And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is 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, 4th in labor force, and 4th in exports.
The left loves to condescend to proles they perceive to be moral and intellectual inferiors. How misogynist to dismiss a sorority girl’s earnest question. Then he proceeds to rattle off a bunch of statistics that have nothing to do with each other and skip the underlying reasons for them. The low math and science scores have gotten worse because Democrat teachers unions have destroyed public schools. Our healthcare system is also in shambles because of government intervention, Big Pharma, and Big Food. The point of this segment is to make the TV audience feel good about how smart and enlightened they are for watching this show.
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. 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?!!!
There is nothing wrong in adults who believe in angels. However, we do we hold the record in adults who believe trans women are women. Boomers like Will raised Millennials, who they sneer at as the worst generation. Maybe it was your parenting and soaking of entitlements that have put basic milestones like buying homes out of reach for millennials and put the country in record debt? I do agree on defense spending and the military industrial complex, and that Yosemite is a national treasure.
We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people.
The implication here is that the left defines what is right and moral. The wars on poor people continue through mass migration which drives down wages, inflation which devalues the currency, public schooling which keeps kids dumb, and criminal justice reform which makes communities unsafe.
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 cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy.
Sounds like Make America Great Again! All of these feats were accomplished with a much smaller government than today. DEI/ESG embedded into government is managed decline.
We reached for the stars, and we 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. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. [to moderator] Enough?
Elon is reaching for the stars, but the left hates him for it. You can’t say “we acted like men” on a college campus anymore because toxic masculinity and gendered language are literally violence. The base of the Democrat party is young, single women whose entire identity is voting blue no matter who and supporting the current thing whether it’s COVID jabs, Ukraine, or trans. MSM does not inform, it propagandizes. We were so scared by the flu that we destroyed our economy, closed schools, and forced everyone to take an experimental Big Pharma jab. We all recognize the problems, but disagree on the root causes and solutions. America is still the greatest country in the world and can be even better once it is unshackled from the left’s destructive mind virus and policies.
Like many others in Hollywood, the 2016 election broke Sorkin and Daniels. They cannot grasp why the peasants detest their elite goodthink. Now they are no longer good at the only thing they used to have talent for - creative entertainment. Neither has made anything of note since The Newsroom. Sorkin wrote a cringey open letter after Trump was elected. Daniels narrated a Biden 2020 campaign ad. They have always been partisan hacks, but now it’s out in the open and has ruined their artistry. Sorkin placed so much emphasis on esoteric knowledge as a marker of intelligence, whereas true intelligence might be to deprogram ourselves by recognizing him as regime charlatans.
At their peaks, Sorkin and Daniels were generational talents. Who else has the range to play Harry in Dumb & Dumber and Colonel Joshua Chamberlain in Gettysburg? Or to direct Moneyball and The Social Network? This is how it feels to watch The Newsroom and any MSM agitprop:
Chamberlain’s speech in Gettysburg is one of the most underrated in movie history:
MSM hacks like Dan Rather are celebrating The West Wing’s 25th anniversary, so you know it’s bad:
Hamilton is if The West Wing and The Newsroom adopted a black trans child:
I'm old enough to have watched the West Wing as an original broadcast. My wife and I liked it at first. But it quickly devolved into pure propaganda, and we stopped watching. It's telling that there are people today who celebrate the series as something significant. These are people who live in their own minds, and aren't even aware that there is a real world.
Started my day the spicy way. Thanks, Yuri!
FWIW, I recently tried to rewatch 1995’s “The American President;” Aaron Sorkin wrote it & Rob Reiner directed. That film, IMHO, was definitely the soft-launch of subversion we would view/hear from them in the 2000’s. I bailed after less than 30 minutes. So obvious now, but way back then, I liked the movie.
Thankfully, I grew up a lot from ‘95-2001; became a Mom and completed my #walkaway from the Dem Party in which I had been raised. Onward & upward!