Episode Two of Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom: Conservatives Are Stupid and Racist

July 3rd, 2012 12:40 PM

During the June 24th premiere of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama, The Newsroom, viewers were introduced to Will MacAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels), a popular news anchor with scathing opinions about the United States. Episode two continued the liberal talking points, this time portraying conservative opinions on immigration as both racist and stupid.

On the July 1 HBO broadcast, MacAvoy turned to Arizona's immigration law. Somehow, instead of a qualified expert, the only people that the fictional production team are able to find to advocate for the law are a ditzy beauty queen who claims that she didn't win a pageant because she agreed with the law, an extremely racist 'author' of self-published anti-immigration literature and a member of a citizen-run border-patrolling militia.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

MacAvoy is then instructed to interview these last-minute guests immediately after a prominent immigrant rights advocate who had been thoroughly prepped for his appearance. Predictably, the first guest delivers his pre-prepared remarks with ease and makes an argument that leaves MacAvoy visibly enchanted.

He then sarcastically turns to his producer and gleefully tells her that "a hospitality major will not be able to speak with sophistication about constitutional law" and proceeds to ask the beauty queen about the constitutionality of states forming their own foreign policy, a subject which she has no knowledge of. The other two guests are no better and through his questions, MacAvoy is able to successfully paint them as un-educated, right-wing hacks.

Even after this, MacAvoy is not finished injecting his opinion into the news. He decides a to air an authorized segment of Sarah Palin blundering a foreign policy question before patronizingly breaking it down and explaining what "she really meant" to the viewers.

After only two episodes, it's clear what viewers can expect from Newsroom: an obnoxious liberal agenda and conservatives constantly portrayed as dumb.