Flashback: HBO Newsroom’s Sanctimonious Tea Party as the Taliban Rant

Brent Baker | July 14, 2013
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HBO’s The Newsroom debuts its second season tonight (Sunday) at 10 PM EDT/PDT. The preachy and sanctimonious left-wing dialogue from creator/writer Aaron Sorkin often came across as unintentional near-parody of MSNBC’s old Countdown with Keith Olbermann, none more so than in the self-righteous commentary delivered by anchor “Will McAvoy,” played by Jeff Daniels, in the first season finale.

“McAvoy” went on a diatribe about the evils of the Tea Party, a particularly alien from reality plot line given what we’ve learned since that Tea Party groups were victims of government abuse by the IRS.

In the episode first run back on Sunday, August 26, 2012, “McAvoy” keys of supposed Tea Party efforts to deny the vote to an elderly black woman. After a list of Tea Party evils, including “denying science,” “unmoved by facts,” “a need to control women’s bodies,” “severe xenophobia” and “intolerance of dissent,” he wraps up with this Olbermann-inspired denunciation:

“We should call them what they are: The American Taliban. And the American Taliban cannot survive if Dorothy Cooper is allowed to vote.”

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

 

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