The Newsroom Concludes Season with More Tea Party Bashing: Calls Them ‘American Taliban’

Despite mediocre ratings and a multitude of unenthusiastic reviews, HBO renewed The Newsroom for a second season after its first two episodes. The commercial-free premium cable network with a penchant for some of the most unabashed forms of liberalism must've really liked Newsroom’s topical, politically-slanted subject material, and anti-American sentiment.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

The season finale featured another intense op-ed assault against the Tea Party. In what was supposed to be a news report, lead anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) summed up his own objections to the movement. The self-proclaimed moderate Republican suggested Tea Party members should be called “The American Taliban” instead, slamming the movement’s: 

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 and a pathological hatred of the U.S. government.

[…]

They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves conservatives and they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans certainly shouldn’t. But we should call them what they are. The American Taliban.”

A similar rant was featured in the third episode two months ago when McAvoy shared his disdain of Tea Party leaders like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint, Allen West, and the wealthiest one percent who don’t seem to pay their “fair share” in taxes. There was an interview with a fictitious congressman Bryce Delaney, who lost his job to a Tea Party candidate because he had the audacity to co-sponsor a bill with a Democrat that provided housing and job training services to homeless veterans.

Ironically enough, the major theme of the show has been the pervasiveness of partisan politics and lack of ethics in broadcast news reporting. Show creator Aaron Sorkin invented an embellished reality populated by real-life politicians for the most part , but where he is free to say anything he wants without sticking to facts.

The Newsroom is not just entertainment; let’s call it what it is -- left-wing propaganda.

See relevant transcript below.

HBO

NEWSROOM

08/26/2012

10:00 p.m. EDT

WILL McAVOY: I'm what the leaders of the Tea Party would call a RINO- ‘Republican In Name Only’. And that's ironic, because that's exactly what I think about the leaders of the Tea Party, because the most conservative Republicans today aren't Republicans. Republicans believe in a prohibitive military. We believe in a common-sense government, and that there are social programs enacted in the last half-century that work but there are way too many costing way too much that don't. And we believe in the rule of law and order and free-market capitalism. The Tea Party believes in loving America, but hating Americans. Tea Party Congressman Allen West of Florida. "I must confess when I see anyone with an Obama bumper sticker; I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool." They believe in loving America, but hating its government. Conservative activist Grover Norquist.

GROVER NORQUIST: I don't want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

McAVOY: And they believe that anyone who disagrees with the Tea Party has sinister anti-American motives.

HERMAN CAIN: The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre.

McAVOY: Most of all, you must never, under any circumstance, seek to reach a compromise with your opponent or do any of what Democrats and genuine Republicans both call "governing." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,

MITCH McCONNELL: Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.

McAVOY: And one other plank in the Tea Party platform-- if you're poor, it means you're either too lazy or too stupid to be rich. Here's André Bauer, Tea Party leader and Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed." It's almost hard to believe Republicans can't get Dorothy Cooper to vote for them.

42:00

McAVOY: During Tea Party rallies and campaign speeches, we've been told that America was founded as a Christian nation and that if the Founding Fathers were here today, they'd tell us so. Here's John Adams in the Treaty of Tripoli-- "As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion--" And here's Thomas Jefferson-- "That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions." And here's the First Amendment to the US Constitution-- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." What's more frightening than the perversion of our great history is that sensible, smart, strong Republicans, the very men and women who should be standing up to radical fundamentalism, are so frightened of losing primary battles to religious zealots that they've thrown in the towel on sanity. So we get this-- Y-Yes, the--the Constitution established the United States of America’s a Christian nation. It's ironic because the biggest enemy of the phony Republican isn't Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, it's this man (Jesus). He said, "Heal the sick, feed the hungry, care for the weakest among us, and always pray in private."

53:00

McAVOY: 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, and a pathological hatred of US government. They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves conservatives. And they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans certainly shouldn't. But we should call them what they are-- the American Taliban. And the America Taliban cannot survive if Dorothy Cooper is allowed to vote. Terry Smith is coming up next with "The Capitol Report." This is "News Night." I'm Will McAvoy. Good night.