The Newsroom
Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2021 7:57 pm
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.
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.