Since it's "The Newsroom's" last season I went back and watched the opening episode's fairly famous rant.
For some reason I now see it completely differently than I did the first time around. The first time around I was cheering like many others have. I'd even have agreed it was "the most honest three minutes in television history", then.
Now? Not so damn much, now that I stop and actually pay attention to what he's saying, what he's asserting so forcefully.
He mocks the college student who is obviously interested enough in politics and media and current events to attend a panel discussion on those subjects, interested enough to ask a question of the guests. He mocks her for daring to think American is great without any proof for her assumed assertion: that America is great at all.
And then turns around and does the exact same thing, himself.
So, it's my turn to rebut with my own rant.
On the incredibly small chance someone here hasn't seen it, here it is via Youtube.
(Link instead of embedding the video, 'cause, hey, surely everyone's actually seen the video, right?)
Aaron Sorkin writes a nice rant for his character here, but I say he's full of crap on a his central points.
And the WAY that he's full of crap insured that it was no surprise at all to me when later the character announces he's a Republican.
There are two primary assertions Jeff Daniel's character, news anchor Will McAvoy, makes in his rant.
1. That the 20 year old college students represent the "worst period generation period ever period".
and
2. That America used to be "great", though it no longer is. You know, the same shite conservatives shovel daily.
Looking at these two assertions:
1. 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).
He asserts that the 20 year old college student is a member of the "worst period generation period ever period" without bothering to even say why that's his opinion.
The only thing he could say about her generation was that none of the shit wrong with our country was her fault. And a snarky comment about "...you, sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day..."
So why is she a member of the "worst period generation period ever period"? Come on, Aaron Sorkin, you do know the educated 20-something person is a fairly big part of your likely audience here, right? Is there some actual reason you are saying GenY is the "worst period generation period ever period"? Because if there IS a good reason for your assertion you sure as hell didn't even TRY to make it clear here.
I mean, what the hell, I'm sure GenY's various shortcomings in the two years since "sorority girl" (WTF, Sorkin? "Sorority girl"? What a sexist, shitty, attempting-to-demean, thing to say to an adult woman who's attending a politics and media panel!) became old enough to vote were what brought American greatness down. I mean, two whole years it's been! 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! Obviously the two years she and her peers have been old enough to vote had been the worst ever. Even worse than, say... whatever generation it was that took up arms in rebellion against the federal government to preserve legal CHATTEL SLAVERY?
Worse than my own Generation Jones? Also known as the last part of the boomers and the earliest part of GenX. Yes, the people who came of age during Carter and Reagan's Presidencies, who spawned "Yuppies" and "Greed Is Good" and who are THE most reliable Republican voting bloc today?
No. No, that's bullshit. If you want to go assigning blame, the state of America in 2012 is his generation's fault (whether he's the Me Generation Baby Boomer, like actor Jeff Daniels, or GenX, not the fault of this 20 year old's GenY.
So why is she a member of the worst generation ever? Because the GenY/Millennial Generation is the ONLY reliably Democratic voting age group? A fact which will very likely change, as they are already drifting away from the Democrats, thanks in large part to the way they were deceived in 2008 and disappointed in the first two years of the Obama Presidency.
2. More importantly, in my opinion, he strongly asserts that we, America, "used to be" a great nation. That's another assertion he just throws out there, with the strong assumption of its correctness, without any proof of it.
Smells like a bunch of Rose Colored Glasses Conservative Bullshit to me.
When, exactly, were we a "great nation"?
When we were waging genocide on the native Americans so we could steal their land? When we forced thousands, women and children, on the Trail of Tears so we could steal their gold?
When? When we wouldn't allow women to vote?
When? When we bought and sold human beings as property?
When? When we wouldn't allow blacks to vote just because they were black?
When? 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?
(BTW, if you ever wondered what it was that Teddy Kennedy did to earn the eternal enmity of the conservatives, look at that link. It was Kennedy who pushed through the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act which did away with the gross, racist, preferential treatment northern Europeans received in immigration requests. Seriously. 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. As bad as our immigration policy is today, it is lightyears ahead of where it was before Kennedy pushed through this fundamental reform.)
So, again, when? When we were backing a military coup in Iran, toppling the democratically elected government of that nation and putting our own handpicked puppet dictator in the throne, because he was willing to let British Petroleum do what they wanted and the democratically elected government wouldn't?
I mean, seriously? When?
Someone point to ANY point in American history that isn't the five f'ing years of WWII and show me where this was a "great" nation.
Just how long do we get to coast on those five years of fighting the Nazi's and Imperial Japan, anyway?
Our Constitution was a "Great Experiment", enshrining the ideal that government derives its authority by the consent of the governed. And it worked, it worked very well! But that isn't "greatness" and no time before 1865 can anyone justify saying America was a "great" nation. Period. NO nation which has legal chattel slavery of human beings can make any claim to greatness. Period.
And none of that was the fault of a 20-year-old college student OR anyone else in her generation.
Yeah, it's a nice rant, but he's also profoundly full of shit.
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.
But that's missing the bigger issue. The question of why in the hell he thinks he can assert America used to be great, at all.
Powerful? Sure.
Great?
Prove it.