Word count: 248 words
Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from Emily Nussbaum, via the New Yorker.
My son and I spent many happy hours watching The West Wing. I loved that talky, realistic, dramatic show, about one of my favourite subjects — politics. Then, when we heard that writer/producer Aaron Sorkin was going to turn his laser-like glare onto the subject of TV news, we were thrilled.
My son loved The Newsrooom. Me? Not so much. I found it too mannered and affected. Perhaps this is because I’d actually worked in a newsroom for a number of years so I could easily spot all the stuff that was “off.” For me, the best thing about the show was the chance to read Emily Nussbaum’s review in the June 25/12 New Yorker.
I think she’s spot on when she says that, “the shows’ air of defiant intellectual superiority is rarely backed up by what’s inside” and I agree with her that Sorkin’s decision to set the show in the “recent past” effectively neuters the script. Don’t we already know what happened with the BP fiasco?
But here is my favourite line from Nussbaum, a blistering metaphor:
Their outrage is so inflamed that it amounts to a form of moral excema –only it makes the viewer itch.
My son is still watching The Newsroom. But I never made it past episode 4.
