Watched The Newsroom last night. We haven't missed an episode yet. What a feast for liberals the past couple of weeks have been, what with the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act and the debut of The Newsroom. We can believe there is truly a liberal constituency out there that still matters, electorally speaking.
I can't stand all the clever-dicking comment about Sorkin's new show; why not give him some credit for putting on screen a fictitious version of the real battle for the soul of TV news, lost to the mercenary motives of men in suits to whom "pander" is a sacred principle? Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker had no good word to say about it. Yet last night there was Will McAvoy laying waste to the inanities of the Tea Party candidates who were knocking out incumbents in the 2010 congressional elections. What, is Nussbaum a Tea Partier? Is she a Republican? Of course, she's writing for one of the few outlets that have not been forced to sell out in the name of profit.
McAvoy might as well have said, "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things," a comment directed at the Roman mob by a character in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that today would fit all those who, in the wake of the election of President Obama, suddenly began whining about "Taking back our country."
The Affordable Care Act is now law. Anyone who examines the Patient's Bill of Rights, contained within it and displayed on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services, will see that the benefits of the law are many. The law is a miracle. No longer will insurance companies be able to turn people down for pre-existing conditions, for example. The insurance companies must even put almost all their income into care, rather than taking it out as profits. How can a majority of voters not embrace these changes, which so obviously benefit them?