RUSH: Yesterday I asked Snerdley if he had seen The Newsroom on HBO. He said he hadn’t. And furthermore, he hadn’t even heard of it, which I totally understand. It’s an HBO show. It started Sunday night. It airs at ten o’clock. It’s one hour. It’s Aaron Sorkin’s latest foray into serious TV. Aaron Sorkin wrote The West Wing. Important to remember is that many liberals who live in fantasyland really ended up believing that the West Wing was the real presidency. They were so disheartened, so unhappy with Bush that Martin Sheen actually became the president.
So I decided I was gonna watch this thing ’cause I’d read all the previews. And what’s fascinating about the previews is the mainstream media hates this show. Well, I wouldn’t say they “hate” it, but they don’t like it. They’ve been panning it. They’ve been ripping it to shreds. So it kind of intrigued me. I want to find out what is it about it they don’t like. So I watched it last night, and I don’t want to try to summarize the entire one-hour show. It’s basically about an anchor played by Jeff Daniels who’s from the old school, who will not tell a soul what his political opinions on anything are.
His objectivity, and the fact that the audience has no idea what he thinks, is his coin of the realm in a world where all of journalism is becoming opinionated. So he’s participating in a forum on journalism at Northwestern University. They’ve got a liberal woman, a conservative guy, a moderator, and Jeff Daniels as a representative of the news media. And they ask him questions like, “What do you think of health care?” and he gives silly answers like, “I don’t know. How are the Jets gonna do this year?”
So they struggle to try to get this guy to open up. “Give your opinion on something! Would you please show us your human side?” So this little college co-ed sheepishly walks to the microphone, “Mr. McAvoy…?” His name is Will McAvoy. “Mr. McAvoy, will you explain to me why America is the greatest country in the world?” And he gives a couple of offhanded non-answers, and is staring at somebody in the audience he thinks is an old girlfriend who’s flashing him signs, telling him what to say.
One sign says, “It isn’t.”
Anyway, he finally launches into this diatribe about how America is not a great country. It’s not the greatest, it’s not great at all, and he cites a bunch of statistics that are wrong. Like, for example, that we are 187th in the world in infant mortality. That’s just bogus, but liberals believe it. So he gives rhyme and verse of why this country sucks, why it’s not the greatest country on earth, and it shocks everybody at his network, his cable net news network. They can’t believe it. He goes on vacation after this appearance and comes back.
The news director has fired his staff, hired a new executive producer for his show, which is his old girlfriend. None of this is known him. He comes back; he’s got a brand-new show based on him being opinionated. So that’s basically the show, with the relationship stuff with the ex-girlfriend who’s now the executive producer tossed in. And what they’re doing with this show is going back. They’re taking issues that have happened and covering them as the liberals wish they had.
Last night’s episode was about the BP oil spill. Aaron Sorkin is a squirrelly liberal. He’s a miserably unhappy liberal, and he’s written a show here that’s essentially… Have you ever been in an argument with somebody and when it’s over, you think about all the things you shoulda said, all the things you coulda said but didn’t think of at the time? That’s what this show is. Go back, take the BP oil spill, and do a newscast of what you shoulda done as a liberal when it happened instead of what did happen. As a means of rewriting history for your delusional liberal audience.
And that’s what I thought when I’m watching this thing last night. “This is amazing. They’re going back; they’re doing the BP oil spill.” They’re creaming Halliburton in this show last night, for bad concrete. They’re creaming BP, which they did anyway. They’re creaming everybody. They’re throwing every liberal cliche you can imagine into this. Global warming, economic destruction, global climate destruction. But not as it actually happened, but it would have happened if Sorkin had been running a news network at the time, if liberals had been true to themselves.
So I get up today and I’m in the midst of doing show prep and I come across a review of the program by somebody I’ve never heard of at a website I’ve never heard of, which doesn’t mean anything. It’s called SultanKnish.Blogspot.com, and the guy who wrote the review is Daniel Greenfield. And the headline of his review is: “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” that liberals are imploding. “On an episode of Seinfeld, George is stung by an insult but is unable to think of a retort, so he spends days trying to come up with the perfect comeback, until he finally thinks of it and travels around the country to get the chance to deliver it. The Newsroom, set in the past, and jumping in right before the political balance tilted toward the Republicans in the mid-term elections, is the same thing.”
The midterm elections of 2010 really shocked ’em. It really sent them for a loop. Remember that movie that George Clooney was in, The Ides of March, and I told you that the first 30 minutes of that movie is…? Now I’m having a mental block. Help me out, Snerdley. There was some phrase I came up with or some way I described something that to me was a flippant, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t comment. It really bugged them. They spent 30 minutes on this in this Clooney movie. It’s a political movie about a candidate, a mayor in Ohio running for reelection or governor. Damn it, I can’t remember. Do you remember what it is? (sigh) Somebody will. Somebody will remind me. Anyway, I was stunned.
I’m watching this TV show, I had no idea the left was so irritated by that comment of mine. Operation Chaos. It wasn’t a flippant comment. It was my attempt to get Hillary votes during the Democrat primary. And they spend the first 30 minutes of this Clooney movie on Operation Chaos, which told me, man, this really bugged them that I was out there encouraging Republicans to re-register as Democrats and vote for Hillary in the primaries to keep that primary going, keep it interesting for us.
The 2010 midterms had the same effect on ’em. So Sorkin’s gone back and done this show prior to the midterms, tried to re-create reality here so it’s not as devastating to ’em. The Newsroom is set in the past, and it jumps in right before the political balance tilted toward the Republicans in the midterms. It’s the same thing. The Newsroom is Aaron Sorkin’s sad attempt — now, wait, folks. Stick with me. Where this is going is not about a TV show. This is a teachable moment about liberals and liberalism and where they are and how messed up they are. That’s what this about. So stick with me on this. I’m not trying to get you to watch this show. That’s not the point. The point of this is to tell you in what really horrible shape liberalism is in in this country. And they are the ones who are telling us that, not that we have to figure it out. This show is evidence that they are imploding, is the point here.
So stick with me. “The Newsroom is Aaron Sorkin’s sad attempt to win an argument by rewriting history, coming up with all the comebacks 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 own reality in which it won the argument and then lives in the fantasy, lives in the middle of the lie. Now, unlike The West Wing, The Newsroom is not set in an alternate world in which the universe innately favors liberals. Instead, The Newsroom is set in an alternate version of the past in which liberals were smarter than they really were and won all the arguments that they actually ended up losing.
“The existence of The Newsroom is the greatest possible concession that the liberals lost the argument and are continuing to lose it. There’s no reason for Republicans to look down on this show. It’s a safer outlet for leftist anger than Occupy Wall Street. ItÂ’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, too. Not only does it give them the security of believing that they really were superior, but it prevents them from learning any useful lessons from their defeat ’cause if they’re gonna sit there and lie to themselves and tell ’em they actually won and they actually were smarter, it can’t help ’em.
“It’s never a bad thing when your enemies escape into a delusional state to a world of their making in which they are in complete control of everything. It makes it more likely that they will cede at least some control over the real world. And itÂ’s not only an admission of defeat, but of emotional and mental fragility. Adults donÂ’t need to build fantasy worlds to escape the effects of their failures on their precious self-esteem. ThatÂ’s for overgrown children who are used to getting trophies for just showing up.”
Now, using my empathy, I know some of you say, “What do you mean, they’re losing? Isn’t Obama president? Isn’t the Supreme Court going their way?” Every election since Obama won and was inaugurated they’ve lost, every meaningful national election. They lost Wisconsin. The unions lost big. Where the Republicans stand up and fight, the liberals lose. They lost the 2010 midterms. They’re going to lose in November. They are losing with the American people. That is why Obama has to rule the way he is. The American people don’t support spitting on the Constitution. The American people do not support rampant, open border, no controls whatsoever immigration into Arizona. Not a majority.
“The Newsroom is the kid that everyone hated losing his race for class president and creating a fantasy world in which he won the election and everyone cheered on his obnoxious tantrums. It may not be good for him, but itÂ’s good for us because it means he hasnÂ’t learned to win. All he has learned to do is manage the emotional experience of defeat through delusions of superiority.” Yep, yep, yep. That’s exactly who they are. 
“Propaganda that tells you that you won, when you actually lost, is corrosive; it inhibits any serious self-evaluation. And without some soul-searching and error-checking, the same mistakes are bound to be repeated over and over again.”
Look, folks, have you seen the CNN audience, 54,000 people? Fifty-four thousand people, 25-54, ten o’clock at night. Fifty-four thousand, it’s a test pattern! We’ve got that many at the corner of 5th and 57th in New York. Have you seen MSNBC? It’s an absolute joke. Everybody in the news media is laughing. MSNBC’s a joke, and they don’t have any audience. Have you seen what’s happening to the New York Times ad revenue? They’re losing readership. They’re losing money big time. Just canned their president because Little Pinch’s girlfriend doesn’t like her. Have you seen what’s happening to American newspapers? They’re losing is the point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, so The Newsroom. Last night they relive the BP oil spill, and they tell that story the way they wish they would have told it back when it happened. And why? Because they’re losing! Global warming is an example. Nobody believes it anymore. The jig is up. Everybody knows it’s a hoax, and they’re ticked off. They thought the BP oil spill would convince everybody that fossil fuels are bad. They don’t understand people wanting the Keystone pipeline. A majority of the American people wanting the Keystone pipeline is a loss for the left. So here comes this show, trying to make themselves feel better, “Gosh, if we’d have only done it this way we’d have won it.” And after the show airs they think they have won it. They’re delusional. That’s the point of this review.
“Now, rather than remembering the actual Obama Years, they will remember The Newsroom’s fictional version of them. And they will make the same mistakes all over again. HBO, which has invested big in progressive propaganda, knows exactly what itÂ’s doing. At a time when customers are dropping cable, particularly the high-priced packages, it is insulating itself with a built-in audience. Forget MSNBC or Comedy Central with their tantrums against real-life Republicans, on HBO, leftists can go on safe safaris to see experienced progressive hunters taking potshots at imaginary Republicans,” and winning every time.
On HBO, liberal audiences — think of Bill Maher here — liberal audiences can go on safe safaris to see experienced liberal great hunters taking potshots at imaginary Republicans, bringing home the game every day. “When the real-life Republicans are just too scary, the good progressive flees to HBO, where the Republicans are just waiting to be deflated with a smarmy line about school prayer, science or terrorism,” global warming, whatever.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just want to finish this. And, look, I knew before I went into this that a lot of you were gonna be scratching your heads and thinking, “What do you mean, libs losing? They just had the Supreme Court win. Obama just told Arizona go to hell.” I understand all of that. What I’m telling you is, folks, they don’t have popular support for this.
There’s no popular support for what they’re doing. They’re not doing what they’re doing because they’re winning. Now, stopping it is a whole different thing. Don’t get confused. I mean, anybody can win if you’re willing to just rip up the Constitution when you have power and do whatever you want to do if nobody’s willing to stop you. They don’t have popular support for what they’re doing. They’re losing popular support! We’re in real trouble if Obama cancels elections.
I’m not in denial about anything here.
Quite the contrary.
Back to this review. And again, the guy that wrote this named Daniel Greenfield at SultanKnish.Blogspot.com. “If liberals acted in public life the way that they do on The Newsroom, they would be signing their own political death warrant. The Newsroom’s message to the media is to be more openly biased.” The Newsroom’s message is that the news media today is not biased enough! They’re too objective. Now, who believes that? CNN has 56,000 viewers. The most politically biased cable news network is MSNBC, and they are a joke. And NBC, their parent, is slowly becoming one with doctored 911 tapes and other tapes that are doctored.
“The media’s last shreds of credibility come from its pretense that it is neutral. The day that news anchors routinely take to the air, announce their political affiliation and begin to rant about Republicans is the day that the last pieces of their empire come crumbling down.” This guy’s opinion is if Brian Williams or Scott Pelley ever went on television and actually admitted who they are, it’d be over. They only exist because there are enough idiots in this country who think that they’re unbiased, down-the-middle, and objective.
And if they destroy that belief among the remaining idiots who don’t know the truth about ’em, then it’s over for ’em. And I would submit to you that in practical business terms, it’s not looking good for them. They’re losing advertisers, they’re losing readers, they’re losing revenue. The magazines? It’s a disaster in the media world, business-wise. “The liberal media is already following that path. And their newspapers, magazines and news shows are turning into ghettos because of it. The Newsroom berates them for not following it quickly enough. And the faster they go down that road, the less influence they will retain.
“If I wanted to destroy the liberal media, I would encourage them to follow The Newsroom’s model. And while they won’t listen to me … they will listen to Aaron Sorkin.” And if Aaron Sorkin tells ’em they need to be more opinionated, if Aaron Sorkin tells ’em they’re not biased enough, if Aaron Sorkin tells ’em that the key to their recovery is more bias, they’ll do it. Did I not tell you this? It was a guy in the New York Times, David Carr. That’s what I couldn’t think of yesterday. It’s a guy in the New York Times who wrote that this show is CNN’s answer.
This reviewer is right on the money. They will believe Aaron Sorkin. If I were to tell ’em to do it, they’d laugh and snicker. But if Aaron Sorkin tells ’em! And it’s already worked. This guy at the New York Times thinks that CNN’s answer is to do what this show is. When what everybody’s missing is they already are! CNN is as left-leaning liberal as HBO. It’s the same parent company: TimeWarner. It’s the same company. Somebody show me a leading liberal radio talk show. Show me one.
“The Newsroom reeks of its own smugness. It is entirely self-reflective. Its politics are a matter of identity. And that identity creates its own universe. There are universes like that already in cloistered urban centers, in ideologically-gated communities and in academia. And when their inhabitants mistake the larger world outside as being no different than their universe, the contest between the ideology and the world begins.” They’re always stunned to learn that the rest of the world doesn’t agree with them on some of their cockamamie stuff like banning trans fats and all that garbage.
Anyway, “To the sociopath…” And you know what a sociopath is? The primary identifier of a sociopath is nothing is ever his fault. And not only is it not his fault, it’s yours. The sociopath never does anything wrong. The sociopath never makes a mistake. The sociopath is the greatest person on earth; everybody else is making the mistakes. “So too the modern liberal sees the world as a place on which to force his own sense of internal identity. He reacts to the ‘otherness’ of those who don’t share his political identity by trying to stamp them out.
“If he can’t physically destroy them, then he retreats to physical and mental enclaves where he destroys them intellectually over and over again, fighting battles against legions of ghosts and shadows, mocking and ridiculing them out of existence, until he is forced to face them in real life and attempts to treat real people the way that he treated the imaginary obstacles to his ego. With The Newsroom, the cycle continues as, anticipating defeat, liberals retreat to a safe place in an imaginary version of the past, in which they can line up all their enemies and knock them down like rows of toy soldiers, in which everything seems clear and certain, and their side always wins.”
This review is right on the money. This business about “react[ing] to the ‘otherness’ of those who don’t share his political identity by trying to stamp them out,” is that not what they do? A militant, left-wing vegetarian is not content to be a vegetarian. You have to be, too. And if you refuse to do it it’s gonna be forced on you. As is everything else the perverted liberal believes! If you don’t accept it, you are a challenge to his little cocooned reality. Your “otherness” is a threat, and so you either have to be gotten rid of or forced to live the way he does.
And the review’s point is that’s what this show is doing. It’s going back to rewrite all the mistakes that liberals made. They’re really smarter and let’s prove it. “This is how we shoulda done the BP oil spill!” Now, I don’t know what next week’s episode is, but it’s gonna be some event in the past, and this fictional newsroom is gonna cover it the way Aaron Sorkin thinks they should have in the first place. And in doing so they’re gonna end up thinking that’s the way it really happened, and then they tell themselves they won.
While next week, CNN will be down to 50,000 viewers. And MSNBC will be laughed at twice as much as it already is. This show, folks, this Newsroom’s whole theory, is a lot like Obama’s autobiography. Revisionism. Make it up. Create characters that didn’t exist, situations that didn’t exist. All to make yourself look mountainously big and tall and majestic. But it’s all lies. That’s why I’ve always said, “Gosh, if people could just understand ideology and live and learn to spot the ideology.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I should tell you, Dan Rather has compared The Newsroom to Citizen Kane. To him it’s the greatest TV show ever, like Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever. Now, I just want to go back, folks, and relive some history here. The BP oil spill. This show, to close the loop on this, goes back and relives this as the Gulf of Mexico is gonna be destroyed, all those millions of barrels of oil being released by the minute. The shores of Louisiana and Alabama destroyed, tourism gone. They go back and they basically relive this as they wish it had happened. We all know, if you’ll recall, and I was here to tell you, I gave you the exact number of gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico, and I said this oil that’s being spilled is the equivalent of a thimble. And the Gulf is gonna take care of it. It’s gonna eat it alive. There is not gonna be any destruction or disaster from this because oil is as natural as the water that it’s in, and that’s exactly what happened.
Three weeks after this thing, after they capped, they couldn’t find the oil. It was no more than a thunderstorm out over the ocean you think taking the salt out of the ocean. It was ridiculous. But they thought the BP — remember, what was the BP oil spill? It was a chance to advance global warming. It was a chance to get you hating oil. It was a chance to have everybody go out and buy a Volt. It was the opportunity they’ve been looking for for everybody to swear off oil, hate oil, believe in global warming. Where are we today? Nowhere near where they wanted to be. It was an utter failure the way they covered it.
So they’re going back and redoing it in hopes they can win it. It’s fantasyland, utterly delusional. And my point is, that’s what we’re up against every day with these people. And the threat that we face is that way too many Americans do not understand that it’s fantasyland delusional. They think it’s real genuine compassion and fairness and equality. Everything they try to fix, they ruin.