Aaron Sorkin's new show started by being attacked mercilessly before it even aired. I took a stand when it finally *was* aired, and I got to see the first episode. I've just watched the tenth, and final, episode of the year. I stand by my original stand.
It's good writing, it's good entertainment, it's good acting and direction, and it's got a pair of balls the size of Mars.
And I'm still betting on it sweeping the Emmy awards, and sending an enormous F**K YOU to all of the people who ranked on it because...well...because they have balls the size of peas, and brains to match.
It's difficult to make entertainment while conveying a useful and needed message. It's even more difficult when the very people who should be cheering that message on are so petty and green with envy that they play shoot the messenger, too.
This was the rap rattled off by Jeff Daniels' Will McAvoy during the wrap-up of his last news broadcast of the season, over a bottom-of-the-screen banner that said Republican In Name Only:
* Ideological purity * Compromise as weakness * A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism * Denying science * Unmoved by facts * Undeterred by new information * A hostile fear of progress * A demonization of education * A need to control women's bodies * Severe xenophobia * Tribal mentality * Intolerance of dissent * Pathological hatred of the US government
"They can call themselves the Tea Party, they can call themselves conservatives, and they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans probably shouldn't. But we should call them what they are, the American Taliban."
This is the message that real news stations in America should have been airing as real news last night as the Republican Convention opened. Instead, it had to be aired on HBO, on a show that even Democrats and liberals tried to kill. This is one of those days that forces me to think about America and remember the lines to a great Bob Dylan song:
"And you ask why I don't live there Honey, how come you even have to ask me that?"
