The Fantasyroom

Critiquing Sorkin's latest liberal emoti-vomit on HBO:

The last time Aaron Sorkin had a high-profile political television show, liberals used it to cope with the decline and fall of the Clinton Presidency and the long winter of the Bush Years. The West Wing was a coping mechanism for the death of a liberal dream, and so is The Newsroom. Both are an escape into fantasy to avoid dealing with the harsh reality.

The Newsroom is Sorkin's sad attempt to win an argument by rewriting history and coming up with all the comebacks that his side couldn't think of two years ago. It's the sad and pathetic spectacle of an ideology creating its own fantasy version of its reality in which it won the argument.

Unlike The West Wing, The Newsroom isn't set in an alternate world in which the universe innately favors liberals. Instead it's set in an alternate version of the past, in which liberals were smarter and won all the arguments that they ended up losing here. And the existence of The Newsroom is the greatest possible concession that the argument was lost.

There's no reason for Republicans to look down on The Newsroom. It's a safer outlet for liberal anger than Occupy Wall Street. It's a miniature universe in which they are smarter, nobler and better than everyone else. Children have fantasy worlds like that. There's no reason that liberals shouldn't.

In general, I agree. But there is a danger, and it lies within the concept of The Big Lie. If they repeat it often enough, the average apolitical lever-puller will start to substitute the liberal fantasy for reality. That's how the communists did it in Russia. Red October was simply the culmination of years of propagandizing in which the fantasy of a workers' paradise was substituted for reality. The Maoists did the same in China. The result was a century of poverty, dictatorship and mind-control over half of the planet.

So let them have their silly little fantasy. Just be sure to point out to anyone who'll admit to watching it that it IS fantasy.