I just watched the second to the last episode of The Newsroom. This show, unfortunately, was cut short only airing three seasons. It was intelligent, it was funny, it was probably one of the best series I’ve seen on television in quite sometime. And it’s gone. Poof. Just like that. And I couldn’t figure it out. The writing was great. The characters, awesome. It was complex, it was smart, it was….smart.
And then we have shows like Supernatural, that run for 900 other seasons.
Easily.
Because, well, Destiel, right? and all the fangirling (my spellcheck made that one word, by the way) that goes on because of *all the feels*.
Aaron Sorkin’s television show didn’t make it for a couple of reasons, and I listed them above. And it didn’t make it because it didn’t emulate *all the feels* of something like Supernatural, which stopped being good after season 5. It slowly descended into absolute rubbish in season 6 when I stopped watching it.
It wasn’t squee worthy. No rippling muscles, no homoerotic sorta kinda incestious flirtation. Love simply wasn’t love and all things were solved by Deus Ex Machina.
It wasn’t sexy – in a carnal knowledge type of way. It was sexy in a cerebral sort of way but then again, not everyone thinks that’s sexy much anymore. Although, if perhaps Will MCavoy was gay and had an affair with Don the producer, then maybe it would have been salvaged.
I have said before, and I maintain, that we have entered into an age of neo-romanticism.
The first age of Romanticism challenged the Enlightenment, mostly, because of the robotic nature of the time. Characterized by people like Jefferson, Locke, and Kant. People who forged great nations, great ideas, great leaps forward in knowledge, and the introduction to certain ways of thinking. It was very clockwork. You saw it reflected in the literature of the time. It was also referred to as the age of reason.
Our Declaration of Independence and United States constitution was a product of this age. This enlightened era.
And then came the Romantics. Wikipedia, because I’m too tired and too pissed off right now to vet this any further, and also because it aligns itself to my sudden distaste for the Neo-Romantic nonsense we’ve turned ourselves into, has this to say about the Romantic Era.
“Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[1] the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature.[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,[3] education,[4] and the natural sciences.[5] It had a significant and complex effect on politics, and while for much of the Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was perhaps more significant.”
Essentially *all the feels* led to nations rising up out of nothing and marching across Europe leading the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Which explains, for the most part, the shift to the very far right in the Republican Party and the emergence of the Tea Party. Everyone knows that these people’s facts are as loose as the hooker they slept with which was set up by a D.C. madam, but hey- it feels good, right? We had people like Michelle Bachmann – a congresswoman- the graduate of a Pentecostal Christian University (Oral Roberts) who would make shit up right on the fly. You had Sarah Palin, a walking hairdo of a woman who would do the same when she would stump for the NRA, and tell other overemotional neanderthals that god was going to judge america for America trying to stop children from being shot in the head. And guns sales flew through the roof. We have all been witness to the absolute meltdown of an entire political party because of these NEO romantics who run on pure emotion. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. It matters what they feeeeeel.
But now we have it in the left as well. Science tells us for every action we have an equal and opposite reaction. And so now it’s the left’s turn to watch their party get melted down into blithering idiocy. Mostly, because of an extremely over emotional and often times simplistic generation coming into power known as the Millennials who- for the most part- are doing exactly what the far right did, not only in the political realm, but the personal and public one as well. Suddenly immunization is no longer trustworthy, as the government is trying to poison your kid or make them autistic with drugs for no discernible reason (or one that makes sense only to UFO aficionados and those looking for bigfoot) other than they feel this is the truth. Seeds that are planted by farmers are filled with poison that’s going to give you cancer or make you sterile or make your poop glow funny colors. And a great champion for people’s rights in this country is no longer a champion for people’s rights she’s a lying bitch who takes money from wall street.
Why? Because it’s true? No.
Because you feel that way.
Has anyone ever told you that sometimes the customer is full of shit? That your opinion is sometimes dead wrong?
America has entered a NeoRomatic Era where rational thought is in the toilet. Supernatural has 900 million seasons while The Newsroom, had three. And we’re going to attempt to burn down the government in some hearty, half assed, uneducated, and fucking stupid knee jerk motion because ……it feels like the right thing to do. And the funny thing is, it won’t be the idiot slack jawed yokels on the right who are responsible for it even though Mississippi passed a LGBt discrimination bill (because it’s fucking mississippi and they are a trailer park excuse for a state) knowing…KNOWING!!! that it will be struck down at the first judge’s desk it comes across. Do you know why? BEcause at least in the third branch of government REASON and the ENLIGHTENMENT still lingers.
It will be us. I expected more from us.
*squee*
This has been Will Mcavoy
That’s Newsnight for April 7th, 2016
Terry Smith is up next with the Capital Report