HBO Helping Barak Obama with “The Newsroom”

HOLLYWOOD LEANS LEFT! – That’s hardly a news headline. The biggest fraud Hollywood ever perpetrated on us was that McCarthy may have said anything which was inaccurate. From sit-coms to dramas, the language of the left pervades almost every show the Hollywood moguls offer. Yet oddly, the most successful, from Seinfeld to The Big Bang Theory, completely avoid political content and magically their audience doubles. This remains a mystery in Hollywood.

We have come to expect a left leaning bias in our entertainment and for the most part we tolerate or overlook it. However, it is sometimes so egregious, so in-your-face, so manipulative of fact and viewer, that someone must throw a flag on the play.

This year’s offering, coincidentally in an election year, is The Newsroom, starring a cast from a left wing wax museum of horrors. The first episode was designed to make you think that by watching it you would seem smart. This is done by employing a writing technique using an every third word sort of shorthand, a sort of intellectual ‘ubby dubby’ which is hard to understand but you get enough of it that in doing so you can feel superior. The Second episode is designed to capture the viewer by using language of both the right and the left so that the viewer wonders, “Where are they going with this?” and, “Could it be that they are going to give a straight up, balanced debate between both political viewpoints?” In the third episode, assuming that if you are still watching they have you in their snare, the exits are locked, the mask comes off, and the zombies start eating your brain. I’m out and The Newsroom is off my record list.

This show reminds me of another drama which erred on NBC (the Nobody But Clinton network) coincidentally also in an election year (2000). You may remember it as the “award winning” West Wing also starring such left wing luminaries as Martin Sheen as a caring, sincere, smart and wonderful Democrat President and Alan Alda playing a sinister Republican Senator. The left bills this tired, predictable script writing approach as “New, Fresh and Bold.” I watched too many episodes of this series silently fuming in my living room chair. The final straw came when a new character (Dr. Nora I think) loosely based on Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a non-political talk radio host who promoted family values and righteous living, was created as a ‘straw-man’ to be ridiculed and dismissed.

In the scene, Dr. Nora and a group of media types are visiting in the Oval Office waiting for the President to arrive. When the President arrives, everyone rises except for Dr. Nora who is half sitting on the corner of the President’s desk. In front of the entire group, President Martin Sheen dresses her down for this breach of etiquette.

I wondered “What sort of male, drama queen expects a woman to rise when he enters a room?” Apparently I could never be President. This was a blatant character assassination of a good person who had always remained above the political fray. It was a way of criticizing Dr. Laura for something she had not nor would ever do in a venue where she could not defend herself. It was a cowardly attack. “Never again, I said,” and I never watched another episode. I encourage you to take the same tact with this new, already “acclaimed” and renewed show. Let me tell you why.

Everything you might have suspected about the show was confirmed in the third and, what is for me, the final episode. The first target in their cross hairs was the Tea Party. Their approach is simultaneously raw, bold and clever. Young, earnest local Tea Party leaders are put up on a screen for what they are led to believe will be an unbiased media interview by iconic newsman, Will McAvoy, played by the show’s star, leftist Jeff Daniels. However they are lectured (educated) that the Tea Party is just a front for the evil Koch brothers whom neither of the poor misguided and uninformed Tea Party leaders had ever heard of. Most interesting is the rationale for calling the Koch brothers evil. It seems they are RICH, even richer than George Soros. In fact, we are told they could buy George Soros several times over. (If only.) This not only establishes the validity of the evilness of the Koch brothers, it seems to absolve George Soros of any evilness because he is such a relatively small fish. The shock of this revelation can be seen on the young Tea Partiers faces, their mouths agape as we cut to a close-up of Will McAvoy’s face; serious stuff. Again the straw man, the dressing down, and what a coincidence, the creator of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin also happens to have been the creator of West Wing. They say that wisdom comes with age but you will have to agree, Aaron Sorkin hasn’t aged a bit.

A new character was introduced in this third episode, the CEO of the parent company played by none other than “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, another Hollywood leftist icon who hasn’t aged a bit. Interestingly, she was introduced in the background, in the shadows of a large room as if they could not bring her to the fore too quickly as it would tip off too many discerning viewers. It looked like her, but neither my honey nor I could be sure until the mask of the shadows was lifted and she began to speak. Interestingly, her character wanted to do “the right thing” (expose conservatives as the evil destroyers of collective American compassion), but she feared the retribution of the evil Koch brothers and instructed the head of the news division, played by another leftist, Sam Waterston, to tell Will McAvoy to “tone it down.” What do you think are the chances of that happening? In episode two Will McAvoy had an epiphany that they ‘would report only the facts with no political spin and no evil commercials. But the reporting would not be right up the center because the facts are never found there. No, they are always found (surprisingly enough) on the left.’ It was in the show!

For those already involved in the show, let me give you the long and the short of what will happen as the show progresses. First the long: If Obama wins reelection, and the world fails to come to a merciful end before he is inaugurated for a second term, expect the show for the next four years to extol the virtues of both the President and his policies. Expect Republicans to be blamed for all of his failures and for obstructing the one additional socialistic policy initiative which would have made it all work. However, if Providence intercedes on our behalf and the Republicans retake the reins of government, expect the show to become a thorn in the side of the administration by having every policy decision questioned, the populace rallied to oppose it, and every success spun into a failure.

In the short term, for the duration of the 2012 campaign, and this is the important meat of this editorial, expect the history of the last two or three years to be re-litigated and rewritten. Here is how this will be done. Real events of the past several years from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which they have already covered, to the latest Supreme Court decision, will be covered factually and then spun in such a realistic way that the real and the fictional will become inseparable in the viewers’ minds. When remembering actual events, the viewers will now include in that memory, misinformation which comes directly from the show, The Newsroom. This is the sinister intent of the show. The Newsroom is an assault on reason, an affront to facts and a weekly slander of good Americans. It is nothing but a propaganda piece designed specifically to rewire the voter before they enter the voting booth in this presidential election year. It is a raw manipulation of an unsuspecting populace who have been purposefully dumbed down and never exposed to the concept of critical thinking.

FNC just aired a piece in which young college-aged people and recent graduates were asked things like, who the United States declared independence from, and who was their favorite Founding Father. Young Paraguayan street urchins would have given more accurate, less embarrassing answers. This over-educated and uninformed American youth is the target audience for The Newsroom, and they are easily susceptible to these manipulations. Be creative. On evenings when The Newsroom will err, invite members of this demographic over to your home for game night and Jello-shots and hope they were too stoned to remember to Tivo the show. By not watching and by encouraging others not to watch, we deprive the show of audience and ratings, the life blood of any show. Satellite and cable are now interactive. They know exactly what you watch and no longer rely on Nielson surveys. As your weekly game night guests leave, hand them a copy of the Constitution (available for $1 per copy from the Heritage Foundation). A few days before voting day, give your guests tickets to an amusement park good only for November 6th. On voting day, show up and vote. The Republic you save may be your own.