I don’t agree with everything in the speech, but it’s fun. It’s another one of those “West Wing” or “The American President” fantasy creations about what we’d like to hear – this time I guess from a media figure seeing as how the title of the series is “News Room.” I’m not going to subscribe to HBO, so I guess I’ll have to wait a year or so until it comes out on DVD.
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July 13, 2012 at 6:52 am
Mitch
In what I think may still be current lingo, “sweet!”
Of course, he would have been boo’d off the stage in the real world.
July 13, 2012 at 7:53 am
Eric Kirk
Yeah, that moment of silence wouldn’t have happened under any circumstances.
July 13, 2012 at 7:54 am
Michelle
I subscribe to HBO every Summer to see True Blood, and caught this show as a result. If it’s still on after the season of True Blood ends, I’ll probably continue my subscription until its season ends; it’s that good.
July 13, 2012 at 10:56 am
suzy blah blah
–we sacrificed, we put our money where our mouths were, built great big things, made ungodly technilogical advances, reached for the stars, acted like men –and we didn’t scare so easy!
-LOL!
July 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Ernie Branscomb
It is about more than our perceived need to decide what we agree with or what we don’t. I think more than anything it reflects the frustration that we all feel with the way our country is being managed.
Many of us at many times have felt the need to scream bloody murder at the rape of our country’s resources, and our economy, not to mention laws that we don’t agree with.
It would be interesting to learn what we would have said in the same circumstance.
July 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm
suzy blah blah
-of course, Ernie, being a manager of a corporate chain store, believes in the ideology of good managementism.
July 13, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Fred Mangels
It would be interesting to learn what we would have said in the same circumstance.
Instead, how about everyone choose their idea of Greatest Country in the World. I don’t think I can choose a country, but I’ll take the liberty of guessing Erik’s choice: North Korea?
Ok. Who’s next?
July 13, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Eric Kirk
Oh absolutely! Pakistan is a close second.
July 13, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Mitch
Fred,
Probably Norway. Maybe one of the other Scandinavian countries. Finland? Or Canada, if you’re looking for a country that has a less homogenous population.
July 13, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Mitch
Or Denmark. I forgot Denmark.
July 13, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Eric Kirk
Or Costa Rica, which actually has public health care, no standing army, and more personal liberty.
July 13, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Fred Mangels
I’ve been to Costa Rica, but I was something like 11 years old.
July 14, 2012 at 8:49 am
Erasmus
Does anyone really think that any country is the “greatest”? My ancestors fled Norway. France has a high suicide rate. —– Remember Orson Welles’ history lesson in “The Third Man”? How Renaissance Italy was rife with murder and corruption but produced Michelangelo and Leonardo. Switzerland at the same time was full of brotherly love and peace and gave the world ….. the cuckoo clock. I suspect that many who call themselves “progressive” would choose the cuckoo clock society over Renaissance Florence. Think of all the “free” health care and education.
July 14, 2012 at 9:16 am
Mitch
Erasmus,
No, of course it’s a fool’s errand to choose a “best” country. But since Fred asked the question, complete with snide offered answer, it seems like fair game to point out that there are many countries that exceed the current United States on any metric other than military expenditures or rate of rise of income inequality. Isn’t that the point that the video clip was making?
July 14, 2012 at 9:28 am
Mitch
Ernie asked a good question. In my opinion, two things give America the potential to be a great country — our founding by revolutionaries opposed to monarchial abuse of power, and our founders’ Enlightenment wisdom in setting up a system mistrustful of the accumulation of power. There are any number of things that can be legitimately criticized in the way the settlers conquered the continent, but our history as a rebellion against dictatorship, and our governmental design based on a mistrust of government are genuine advances in societal engineering. (LOL, Suzy. LOLOL!!)
Our founders were clear that it would take work by every subsequent generation to uphold the principles on which they tried to found a country.
They couldn’t foresee the power of television, or an era in which money could route itself around any government, with the support of governments.
July 14, 2012 at 9:33 am
Erasmus
I just saw the clip —- and congratulated myself for never watching TV (though I used to, years ago). What a weird brand of sanctimonious drivel, what a whitewashing of our past joined to a cliche-ridden denigration of the present. And that treacly music accompanying the final words …. ugh. Let the guy move to whatever he deems the “greatest” country —- who would miss him?
July 14, 2012 at 9:43 am
Mitch
You forgot the best part, Erasmus… the drivel is created to satisfy the needs of advertisers to accumulate audiences of today’s TV watchers. (Even on HBO, I assume.)
July 14, 2012 at 9:58 am
Eric Kirk
HBO doesn’t have advertisers, which is, I think, why they are willing to take more risks with their programming.
Erasmus – I agree regarding the last portion of the speech. There was never an age where we didn’t beat our chests. What age is he talking about? The McCarthy era? World War II? The Vietnam War? The Depression?
It’s not real. Obviously in real life the two on stage with him wouldn’t have sat back quietly like that, and the audience would have been booing, cheering, and otherwise carrying on throughout. Plus, does he really have all those stats memorized that it wasn’t a prepared speech?
But there’s a wit in the writing and a willingness to transgress which is uncharacteristic of much television and even film. It was the wit combined with drama which made series like Firefly and West Wing compelling. I suspect this series will probably offer up some artistic merit.
July 14, 2012 at 10:07 am
Erasmus
A few years ago, you recommended “The West Wing” to me and I watched many episodes on DVD: they were quite enjoyable. I hope this series comes close to T.W.W. and that I’ll be able to play catch-up on DVD.
July 14, 2012 at 11:34 am
Mitch
Thanks for the correction. Somehow I’d thought that even the premium cable networks now carried ads.
July 14, 2012 at 7:40 pm
moviedad
Are you guys for real? Everything about TV, or on TV sucks.
July 15, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Eric Kirk
No wonder I thought the writing was Sorkinesque. It’s his series!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newsroom_(U.S._TV_series)