Day 28: I'm feeling a bit under the weather* tonight, so I spent the evening catching up on "The Newsroom". I love Sorkin's writing. I think the only thing he wrote that I couldn't sit through was "The Social Network", but that was mostly transference; I don't believe that creating anything, at all, entitles you to monies, one way or the other. If you create, create, and if you don't, then don't. Create for the sake of creation, if your muse pushes you that way. If you create with the sole purpose of being rich... I just don't understand your motivation. I can't watch an entire movie about people fighting over billions of dollars based solely on the fact that one person did a thing and other people feel entitled to benefit from that thing. It makes me terribly sad.
Anyway, I am LOVING "The Newsroom." It's classic Sorkin writing. I think that using recent news stories to make your characters smarter and better is a great conceit. Sorkin himself pointed it out after the first episode, so it's not that he's not aware of it. The criticism leveled against the show is that is has, in some cases, years of hindsight to make the exactly right call, but it DOES raise the issue that news, at one point in our nation's history, could be trusted BECAUSE of the integrity of the newscasters.
Now, we call it the bias. Integrity cannot enter into it, because we throw up "pundits", which is shorthand for "spinners", and not very good shorthand at that. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone wants to be famous, and everyone wants to be the smartest man in the room.
And that's where they lose me; while it's not always true, it's frequently true that I actually AM the smartest person in the room.
I find that I can quickly suss out the difference between "fact" and "spin", and it's aggravating how small the fact:spin ratio is.
I don't listen to the news much, anymore. I certainly don't tune in to Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw, as I did in my youth. I read the internet news, and I am depressed by the constant, constant, constant spin.
At the end of the day, "The Newsroom" is trying to address that.
And with Sorkin's hand on the pen, they're doing a pretty amazing job.
Love you lots, my peeps.
Tomorrow: ADVENTURE!!
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*There is no actual, you know, WEATHER, in California, so I assume this is an East-Coast expression.
Anyway, I am LOVING "The Newsroom." It's classic Sorkin writing. I think that using recent news stories to make your characters smarter and better is a great conceit. Sorkin himself pointed it out after the first episode, so it's not that he's not aware of it. The criticism leveled against the show is that is has, in some cases, years of hindsight to make the exactly right call, but it DOES raise the issue that news, at one point in our nation's history, could be trusted BECAUSE of the integrity of the newscasters.
Now, we call it the bias. Integrity cannot enter into it, because we throw up "pundits", which is shorthand for "spinners", and not very good shorthand at that. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone wants to be famous, and everyone wants to be the smartest man in the room.
And that's where they lose me; while it's not always true, it's frequently true that I actually AM the smartest person in the room.
I find that I can quickly suss out the difference between "fact" and "spin", and it's aggravating how small the fact:spin ratio is.
I don't listen to the news much, anymore. I certainly don't tune in to Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw, as I did in my youth. I read the internet news, and I am depressed by the constant, constant, constant spin.
At the end of the day, "The Newsroom" is trying to address that.
And with Sorkin's hand on the pen, they're doing a pretty amazing job.
Love you lots, my peeps.
Tomorrow: ADVENTURE!!
----
*There is no actual, you know, WEATHER, in California, so I assume this is an East-Coast expression.
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