America. Some people love it, some hate it and some love to complain that it isn’t as great as it once was. Some people relish in proclaiming that contemporary America is in its waning years, doomed if it doesn’t veer from its current course. Although some of you may think I’m talking about Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” I’m really talking about Aaron Sorkin, specifically his cancelled show "The Newsroom."
He and his show had a great run of cynically asserting that America isn’t the “greatest” country anymore. Now, I will admit that I only watched the first season and it wasn’t the worst thing ever, practically everyone has seen or heard of the opening scene of the first episode, in which Jeff Daniels’s character Will McAvoy goes on a tirade about contemporary America and how college students are part of the “worst period generation period ever period.” He goes on to nostalgically reminisces about the America that once stood up for what it believed in and “didn’t scare so easily.” I will agree that “the most honest three and a half minutes of television” does well in reminding Americans that we don’t live in a perfect nation. There’s always room for improvement, I get it. But it ultimately belittles the viewer and shares the beliefs that so many grouchy, stubborn, absentminded people have.
I saw the show prior to graduating high school, but it was ultimately my senior year health class that created this grudge I have for the show. My teacher showed our class the opening scene to which I referred, and while many might just shrug it off, I believe that some people might not understand how dangerous it is. Not only did my teacher show the video, but praised it as an enlightening video. A powerful, moving, brutally honest and unapologetic assessment of America, when it isn’t any of these things. The scene mines deep into the nostalgia well and panders to those who think the 20th Century was filled with sunshine and rainbows, filled with conviction and strong American values. It insults millennials simply for being a part of the millennial generation. It disregards the achievements and innovations of this country in favor of condescendingly telling us that we are no longer stand up for our beliefs or take care of our neighbors, that we are immoral and void of a once great economy, void of great art, void of ambition.
The crucial problem with Sorkin’s little rant is that he doesn’t live in contemporary America, or even reality if he believes the majority of his spiel. In a few short minutes he believes he's summed up, in a very condescending way, how America has fallen from grace as the greatest country on Earth. We have changed, yes, as a country, as a people. We’ve made advancements and we’ve taken some defeats, and we are not a perfect nation. But we are not down and we are not out. We are stronger, smarter, and have more ambition than ever. At the end of the day, the generation that he insults and belittles, the one he calls the absolute worst, will outlive him and his obsolete ideals. It is up to us now to prove him wrong, to prove that we are in fact the best, and make our country better than the America detached people like Sorkin believe once existed.
Here's the video:
