The Newsroom

[Some Schmo]

Has anyone else watched this HBO series?

I watched it back when it was airing original episodes, and I loved it then. My wife and I were looking for something new to watch, and I told her that I bet she'd love it, and that I was willing to watch it again. We've been binge-watching it this week.

It's about a fictional newsroom reporting on real-world current events. This particular newsroom is trying to create an old-fashioned news show where they care only about reporting facts and don't care about ratings. The pilot starts with the BP oil spill in the Gulf and does shows around the big events of 2011 to around 2013 (the show is three seasons) like it's one of the competing news channels at the time.

I have to say, it's even better now than it was in its day. All the issues they bring up in that show, especially with respect to the direction the GOP has taken, have only gotten worse. That show, it turns out, was a flashing warning sign about the coming cult we now know as Trumpism. In the show, it's referred to as the Tea Party, because that's what it was called at the time.

In one show, the main character (Jeff Daniels, the Anchorman of his news show) calls the Tea Party The American Taliban after listing off everything they were about (calling everyone who disagreed with them "the enemy" rather than "fellow Americans," antipathy toward education, intolerance of compromise, etc etc). I thought the comparison was apt. He notes that the original Tea Party had a noble purpose but that it had been hijacked by the radical wingnuts in the party.

Now the wingnuts are the party. The more politicians successfully campaigning as wingnuts, the more people they actually represent. One can't deny the rising popularity of damned nonsense in politics. What we're living through today is essentially what the show was warning about.

Anyway, I highly recommend it, as it documents the time leading up to Trump, and shows very clearly the seeds and growth that got us to where were in 2016 and where we are today.

[Some Schmo]

by the way, some folks here might remember when this video went viral a few years back, several years after the episode had aired. Right wingers seemed to be outraged over it all of a sudden.

What's funny is that in the show, his comments go viral right away and cause a huge outrage; he loses some popularity immediately.

In the real world, it only took years for right wingnuts to get offended. I guess it's understandable. They have a huge backlog of things by which to be outraged and frightened.

[Gunnar]

by the way, some folks here might remember when this video went viral a few years back, several years after the episode had aired. Right wingers seemed to be outraged over it all of a sudden.

That was a great video, and it can hardly be shown too often. Tragically, the people who most need to see it and take it to heart are the least likely to do so.

[Moksha]

Now the wingnuts are the party.

Will these wingnuts metastasize? It is scary when a county goes bonkers. It usually ends badly. Spain went through such an episode from 1936-1975 and then came out of it. It frequently ends in a devastating war.

[Some Schmo]

Tragically, the people who most need to see it and take it to heart are the least likely to do so.

Agreed, although a lot of them did see it and chose to attempt picking it apart rather than taking the message to heart.

I remember watching one of the videos "debunking" Jeff Daniels' monologue in that scene. Talk about straining at gnats.