新闻编辑室第一季

“举国上下都以为本拉登还活着，我哪怕让他早死一分钟，这么多年的记者生涯就没白费！

”——麦肯兹引用2011年5月1号奥巴马就国家安全问题发表的讲话：“晚上好。

今晚，我可以向美国人民和世界报告，美国执行了一次军事行动，击毙“基地”组织的头目、杀害成千上万无辜男女和儿童的恐怖主义分子奥萨马‧本拉登（Osama bin Laden）。

近10年前，九月的一个晴朗的日子由于美国人民遭受历史上最惨痛的袭击而变得黑暗。

“9.11”的画面深深地烙在我们民族的记忆中──被劫持的飞机划破九月的晴空；双塔倒塌在地；黑色浓烟从五角大楼滚滚冒出；宾州尚克斯维尔散落着93号航班的残骸，英雄的公民以自己的行动避免了更多人的心碎和毁灭。

然而，我们知道，最悲惨的画面并不为世界所见。

饭桌前的空位子。

那些在成长过程中被剥夺了母亲或父亲的孩子们。

那些永远无法再体验到被孩子拥抱的感觉的父母。

近3000名公民从我们身边被夺走，在我们心中留下一个巨大的空洞。

”

911事件的伤痛烙在了美国儿女的记忆之中，那天早晨所发生的惨剧，夺走了无数美国民众的生命，也因此改变了这整个国家，加深了他们心中的恐惧和敌意，因而击毙本拉登对于美国民众的意义是其他国家所不能企及的。

事实上，过去的十几年中，也不断有影视作品从不同的角度去解析911事件与击毙本拉登。

例如以政治角度去透析911事件发生原因的《华氏911》，

也有从救援者的角度去身临灾难现场的《世贸中心》，

或者是用社会各界人士对待911事件的表现的《911事件簿》，

还有用冷静、客观的角度去描述反恐行动的新闻电影《猎杀本拉登》……

而我本次所谈，则是美剧《新闻编辑室》第一季第7集，从这群理想主义的新闻工作者入手，看击毙本拉登事件对美国民众的深远意义。

2011年5月1日晚，新闻编辑室的工作人员正在金牌主播威尔家中开party，庆祝晚间新闻2.0成立一周年，然而ACN电视网新闻部部长查理收到消息，称总统将于当晚东部时间10点就国家安全问题发表讲话，引起轰动，老查理猜测是击毙了本拉登，于是新闻团队立即结束了庆祝活动，赶往演播室准备新闻直播。

本集的主线，从开始收到白宫发出的消息到确认总统发表讲话的内容，再到新闻直播。

在这整个的过程中，我们看到了不同身份的美国民众对于击毙本拉登消息的反应，也深深感受到了美国人对于这等待已久的胜利的欣喜。

麦肯兹，ACN电视网晚间新闻的金牌制片人，在知晓总统将要发表安全问题讲话以后，她需要确认消息的真实性。

于是全片中，我们看见她带领的团队，不断跟进消息的进度的脚步。

老查理是麦肯兹的上司，当麦肯兹获得了好几篇确认时，他却仍然不肯放行，不让她把消息播报出去。

对于他来说，在确切消息没有放出来之前，直接播报本拉登已死的消息是不负责的。

“不论今晚发生了什么，我向你们保证，它涉及到众多生命和总统的职位，我们必须报道正确。

”

在查理的命令下，麦肯兹死守着播报的关口，禁止播报员泄露出任何信息。

当主播简不再愿意吊着观众的胃口，想要把消息报道出去时，她下令切断了华盛顿的信号，导致直播黑屏几十秒。

这是属于她作为ACN制片人的责任，必须严格把控消息的真实性，即使她知道，拉登确实已死。

当老查理问她，在总统讲话前5分钟直播的意义时，她说：“举国上下都以为本拉登还活着，我哪怕让他早死一分钟，这么多年的记者生涯就没白费！

”

在本集中，男主角威尔由于生病，嗑了两片大麻药嗑嗨了导致整集都在细微的神经错乱中度过，但即使如此，他还是跟麦肯兹说：“我绝对不可以不报道这消息，你懂吗？

”

可见，在新闻界，能够播报击毙拉登的消息是一场无上的光荣，这不仅是对于他们整个的职业生涯的重要一环，也是对美国民众一种负责任的态度。

印度小伙的女友凯莉，一个普通的美国民众，她的父亲是双子塔某公司的合伙人，她代表了那些在911事件中失去亲人的美国民众。

在编辑室的人大多在庆祝本拉登已死之时，她却在天台默默流泪。

对她来说，本拉登与她，或者说与911事件的当事人家属有着血海深仇。

她以为这个消息会像开关一样，让她感到好过一点。

可当消息属实的那一刻，她却并没有感到胜利的喜悦，而是再次缅怀起了自己的亲人，默默流泪。

逝者已去，她们只有在尘世中勇敢地活下去，才是对那些死去的亲人，最好的交代。

另一方面，由于种种原因，编辑室的三名工作人员，被滞留在了一架已着陆的飞机上。

焦躁不安的唐，由于无法参与到直播工作中，想尽办法想要离开飞机。

他的搭档埃利奥特倒是看得很开，因为他们在搜集消息的过程中，已经切实地去参与到工作中了。

他只是遗憾，不能带着老婆孩子到演播室一起看直播。

飞机上的乘客收到了消息，称总统将就安全问题发表演讲，有人以为有恐怖袭击（照应911），引起了恐慌。

知晓真相的唐站起来安抚乘客，却被空姐强烈阻止：“我不管，你不能控制飞机上的乘客。

”。

在机长来到机舱解决纠纷时，一时激动的唐看到了美联航的制服时，却瞬间冷静了下来，然后一本正经地向机组人员传达了新闻：本拉登被击毙了。

我个人认为，这部分情节是全剧中比较用心的，因为片中的飞机来自于美联航，正好是911事件中遇难飞机的直属公司，从某种意义上来说，机组人员也是911事件中的当事人。

同为当事人的还有纽约警察，纽约消防队。

在保镖朗尼知道了即将播报的新闻时，他第一时间想到告诉随行的警察；

当直播开始时，一名新闻工作者戴着纽约消防队的帽子驻立着。

在911事件中，93号航班上的乘客和机组人员英勇地抗击恐怖份子，最终使飞机坠毁在了宾州尚克斯维尔，成为人们在提及911事件时的英雄事件。

而在10多年前的911事故现场中，不断涌现着纽约消防员和警察的身影，这些角色，都是911事件中英雄的符号。

普通民众对拉登之死尚且是兴奋的，更何况是这些当事人呢？

ACN终于确认了消息的真实性，威尔开始直播时，演播室所有的工作人员都起立着，听此消息从ACN的工作现场报道到每家每户的荧幕。

那一刻，是神圣的，也一种精神在连接着，团结着美国民众。

报道并不像是超级碗的比赛一样兴奋，从威尔的语言中，更是让我深深感受到了在过去的十几年里，911事件对于全美，是一个无法抹去的记忆，带来的，也是最黑暗的噩梦。

所幸，噩梦的罪魁祸首已经被绳之以法，他们都将在那晚，那次可喜的提醒，那场等待已久的胜利以后，迎来最光明的未来。

在这场胜利消息的放送前后，《新闻编辑室》将美国众生相很好地表现了出来。

我并不崇尚美帝的价值观，我也无法体会到美国人被911事件所带来的伤痛，然而我仍然在他们的主旋律剧集之下，感受到了那种震撼人心的力量，感受到了击毙本拉登对于美国民众，是一次伟大的胜利，以及这场胜利背后的包含的深远意义。

击毙本拉登以后，他们需要的不再是仇恨，而是一次注目礼式集体缅怀。

S1E1 墨西哥湾深海原油泄漏事件第一集，聚焦墨西哥湾深海原油泄漏事件，由 ACN 当家主播发表反讽美国的言论开始，接着面临原团队众叛亲离和新团队临危受命（涉及情感纠葛）；80 分钟的影片让人看的紧张刺激，高潮迭起，展示了主播和 EP 之间的鱼水关系，同时为后文埋下了大量伏笔；结尾的小反转，让人有点小感动；

S1E2 移民问题第二集，围绕移民问题展示了新闻播报过程中随时可见的“不确定性”，以及有经验的主播和 EP 是如何解决问题的；主播和 EP 之间的感情线在本集中通过“群发”电子邮件的方式得到极大推动；S1E3 第112届国会第三集，以下内容引用自豆瓣网友：“简单总结下，奥巴马当选之后，在医改、堕胎和持枪问题上，民主党偏左，共和党为了争取更多支持走了中间路线，茶党应运而生，茶党是极右的极保守的一群人，打着共和党和草根旗号的其实有组织有势力的奥巴马反对者，背后有不少大财团在支持。

Will 之所以看不下去一定要揭开他们的伪装，只是因为他其实不管左右，只是本着对 facts、对新闻真理的坚守，想让更多的人知道在不经意间他们的选票被操纵了。

Will 的逻辑是，一方面奥巴马和民主党有问题，共和党也有问题。

但 Will 追着很多共和党议员候选人不放，让电视台女 boss 很着急，毕竟里面很多人直接和电视台有经济往来。

另一方面 Will 让观众看到茶党和共和党的矛盾，比如茶党的极端民粹主义，比如对少数族裔的歧视，和温和的共和党其实是水火不容的。

在国会议员的竞选中，茶党其实挤掉了很多老牌共和党员的席位，这些极右席位意味着和奥巴马民主党左派席位出现更明显的裂痕，Will 已经预见了这些分歧会带来更严重的后果，比如片尾提到的债务上限危机。

”S1E4 美国国会女议员遭枪击事件第四集，主播的感情生活再起波澜，在经历了一场和八卦杂志相关的“事故”后，Night News 团队成员之间的感情更融洽了；

S1E5 埃及民众抗议活动第五集，聚焦埃及开罗民众抗议活动，主要展现了 News Night 团队对“线人”的负责态度；主播自掏腰包将人赎回令人钦佩，其他人自愿筹款分担，体现了集体凝聚力

S1E6 福岛核电站泄漏第六集，死亡威胁，福岛核泄漏，失眠，戒指，流利的日语，经济学女博士强势出彩

S1E7 本拉登之死第七集，主播嗑药把自己弄high了，匿名电话爆料精准，但神秘莫测，几个小喽罗的情感纠葛调味料性质十足

S1E8 大停电，热情悲剧第八集，停电拯救了很多人…和节目S1E9 大停电，模拟辩论第九集，中间停电时 EP 的一段自白式的歇斯底里，结尾每个人都在忙自己的破事的片段，都很真实和精彩S1E10 “大傻瓜”第十集，最狗血的剧情是办公室恋情，最吸引人的剧情也是办公室恋情 他终于知道了那个时候的人是她原创不易，添加关注，点赞，在看，分享是最好的支持， 谢谢～更多精彩内容，欢迎关注微信公众号 西风冷楼阙

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1.最开始看这部美剧是在微博上看见蔡康永转发了，意思大约是这么快的语速，白宫风云都已经很快了，还要再快吗？

所以，为了练习自己的听力，开始了这部美剧。

然后就被第一集的American is not the world greatest country any more那大段的话shock到了。

其实更喜欢那句问题的存在首先要去认识到，很合自己的心意，然后开始了。

只是觉得很合胃口，然后开追，就难以自拔了。

2.之前的评论中有sorkin之前的一些故事，我并没有涉猎过他之前的剧集，唯一有的也只是《点球成金》，很多他的手法在newsroom中还可以看到，例如运用音乐快速的带过剧情，在关键点的留白和主人公深沉的思考（也许其中涉及到导演的想法），但是其实也可以看出，索金有很强的个人特色，风格也很明显。

在故事的推进和铺陈中，greater fool 和 bully 两集用了很类似的叙述方式。

而大家经常会提到的“无聊”“没意思”的某集其实更有一些内容，高潮迭出的那些集数，个人觉得更多是感情的加分和剧情的迸发，而并非是sorkin本来想要表达的东西。

毕竟人生不是一个接一个高潮，能够在低谷中保持操守才是品质吧。

3.不知道这里有没有对于茶党的相关信息熟悉的人，能够给我一些脑补有关茶党所进行的活动以及一些评价，感激不尽newsroom里第三集中大段对于茶党的批判是有现实意义的，激进的政治投机者和煽动者已经篡改了茶党的定义，更多的是为了谋求voter而不是真正去践行所发表的言论。

而媒体的内战一定程度上起到了推波助澜的作用，使得选民被蒙在鼓里，进而被蒙蔽。

我想sorkin是想还给选民一个真实，以及mac所说的“do the real news”4.TMI是TMZ吗？

一直很想问这个问题。

TMI最后的关门大吉，sorkin应该是很希望这样的情况出现在现实中。

媒体的责任与义务不应在那些八卦上，而更多地是教人向善will也曾说“i'm on a mission to civilize”因为我有教化众生的义务。

charlie在第四集最后和leona谈判的时候也说道“news organization are a public trust with an ability to inform and influence the national conversation.”公众信任的媒体所存在的意义。

5.追梦赤子心这部电影我还有专门去看过，承认在“jersey thing”我也哭了。

那天，我也更新了，叫做“理想主义者的逆袭”，will在最后对nina说到他的同事，使我相信，这个世界上有很多人在为了名利而追逐，还有很多人是在为了信仰和理想。

Amen，在每次祈祷时可否听见自己内心的回应？

而我们又何曾记得当初的梦想，又在做什么呢？

而这回应又是否符合自己当初的期许呢？

6.Bully everyone can be bully.will在这一集做了深刻的内心剖析，豆瓣也有评论说sorkin曾经用过这样的手法在副总统中。

黑人教授和WILL的那段对话，WILL越界并不断刺激他，最后造成了不可弥补的后果。

will之后自己承认，我是恶霸，我才是那个造成这一切的人。

可是，will最终最终依然没有和mac解决这一切。

7.OBL和WILL的high，这样的一个夜晚，不应该像是这样。

曾经试想过，是否会有狂欢，是否会有庆祝，后来才明白，一场灾难所遗留的是难以平复的伤痕，在遇难者的身上，在遗孀的心里，在美国的土地上，更在历史上。

“we were transformed that morning into a different nation, more fearful and so, of course, more hostile.”无论做什么都夺不回那些生命，更抹不平心灵的伤痛。

无论是neal的女友、美航机长、带FDNY帽子的制片人，应该用那样一句话，will说的那句。

“America's darkest days have always been followed by its finest hours.”8.tragedy porn恰逢其时是美国信用危机，而news night为了能够举行共和党内部辩论会而不得已屈服于reese 开始报道cathy anthony 可是大家都不愿意接受这一切 全部都对于这件案件并不感兴趣我在想的是，很多时候我们的媒体是真的要那样报道新闻吗？

奥运期间为了夺人眼球的各种夸大评述和评论。

以及难以生存的媒体环境，程益中，王小山，李承鹏，作业本，难道也要用各式各样的奇闻异事去转移注意力，而不是看看我们周围的世界到底已经破败成个什么样子？

不是看看我们要付出多大的代价才能够生存？

而民主、自由的权利又有多难取得？

9.在最第一集，mac不断重复要给选民一个真实，而不是用媒体和公众人物合力打造的泡沫去骗取选票，去营造一个美好的假象。

咄咄逼人的will，犀利的问题，政治的真相总是丑陋且难以令人相信，美好的谎言和令人咂舌的现实一起出现。

很简单，要的不是谎言，要的是切实的政策，真实的回答，即便不那么难以接受，但是“我不同意你所说的话，但我誓死捍卫你说话的权利。

”谎言请离开............10.what is illness to the body of our knight errant ?what matter wounds ?for each time he falls, he shall ries again.woe to the wickedsancho, my armor, my sword !!!害怕输掉的后果 然后撒谎 然后继续着自己荒诞的行径 魔化的教育 部落心态 对政府以及政府内部病态的仇视是我想错了 还是 ？

文GE曾经也是这样 而现在依然有这样的人出现想去再读一边堂吉诃德 去明白真正应该在这个世界上做什么？

又应该做出怎样的选择。

思想凌乱，各位轻拍

英语记者有一个行话。

“break”不仅是打碎，也可以是报道（break a news, break the story），且更突出一个新闻或者丑闻突然被报道给大众（Oxford American English）。

所以一个新闻被报道出来，也可以说，（a news is ）broken。

这里作者用了一个新闻学双关，用broken的另一层含义（i.e. 破碎的）来作为标题，也体现了她对这部描写新闻工作者的剧的不满。

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/25/broken-newsBy Emily Nussbaum“我很讨人喜欢！

“Will McAvoy在Aaron Sorkin在HBO上的新剧“新闻编辑室”的试播集上吼到。

McAvoy（由Jeff Daniels扮演）是一个易怒的、依赖观众缘的新闻主播；因此，这是一句好台词。

这也是剧中仅有的一处自我嘲讽--和我上次最后看到的地方。

在“新闻编辑室”，聪明人轮流互相崇拜。

他们歌颂事实。

他们企图重新制作电视新闻。

正如他们的天才制作人多次以不同方式宣布“这是一个新节目，所以我们有新规矩”。

他们积攒的愤怒变成一种道德上的湿疹，让自己的观众痒痒地不舒服。

“I’m affable!” Will McAvoy yells in the pilot of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series. McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) is an irascible anchor whose brand is likability, and it’s a good line, delivered well. It is also a rare moment of self-mockery—and one of the last sequences I was on board for in the series. In “The Newsroom,” clever people take turns admiring one another. They sing arias of facts. They aim to remake television news: “This is a new show, and there are new rules,” a maverick executive producer announces, several times, in several ways. Their outrage is so inflamed that it amounts to a form of moral eczema—only it makes the viewer itch.我倒不是说“新闻编辑室”一无是处，尤其如果你对这部剧的政治观点比较认同。

剧开始没黑料、广受好评的大主播McAvoy也有一段很有效率的，像是在“社交网站”中的 "I'm mad as hell"怒吼。

This is not to say that “The Newsroom” doesn’t score points now and then, if you share its politics. It starts effectively enough, with an homage to “Network” ’s galvanizing “I’m mad as hell” rant, as McAvoy, a blandly uncontroversial cable big shot whom everyone tauntingly calls Leno, is trapped on a journalism-school panel. When the moderator needles him into answering a question about why America is the greatest country on earth, he goes volcanic, ticking off the ways in which America is no such thing, then closing with a statement of hope, about the way things used to be. This speech goes viral, and his boss (Sam Waterston) and his producer, MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), who’s also his ex-girlfriend, encourage him to create a purer news program, purged of any obsession with ratings and buzz.Much of McAvoy’s diatribe is bona-fide baloney—false nostalgia for an America that never existed—but it is exciting to watch. And if you enjoyed “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s helpful counterprogramming to the Bush Administration, your ears will prick up. The pilot of “The Newsroom” is full of yelling and self-righteousness, but it’s got energy, just like “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and his hit movie “The Social Network.” The second episode is more obviously stuffed with piety and syrup, although there’s one amusing segment, when McAvoy mocks some right-wing idiots. After that, “The Newsroom” gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping. The third episode is lousy (and devolves into lectures that are chopped into montages). The fourth episode is the worst. There are six to go.Sorkin is often presented as one of the auteurs of modern television, an innovator and an original voice. But he’s more logically placed in a school of showrunners who favor patterspeak, point-counterpoint, and dialogue-driven tributes to the era of screwball romance. Some of this banter is intelligent; just as often, however, it’s artificial intelligence, predicated on the notion that more words equals smarter. Besides Sorkin, these creators include Shonda Rhimes (whose Washington melodrama, “Scandal,” employs cast members from “The West Wing”); Amy Sherman-Palladino, of “The Gilmore Girls” (and the appealing new “Bunheads”); and David E. Kelley, who created “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Legal.” Sorkin is supposed to be on a different level from his peers: longer words, worldlier topics. And many viewers clearly buy into this idea: years after Sorkin’s terrible, fascinating “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was cancelled, I still occasionally run into someone who insists that Americans were just too stupid to get it.As Dan Rather might put it, that dog won’t hunt. Sorkin’s shows are the type that people who never watch TV are always claiming are better than anything else on TV. The shows’ air of defiant intellectual superiority is rarely backed up by what’s inside—all those Wagnerian rants, fingers poked in chests, palms slammed on desks, and so on. In fact, “The Newsroom” treats the audience as though we were extremely stupid. Characters describe events we’ve just witnessed. When a cast member gets a shtick (like an obsession with Bigfoot), he delivers it over and over. In episode four, there’s a flashback to episode three. In a recent interview, Sorkin spoke patronizingly of cop shows, but his Socratic flirtations are frequently just as formulaic, right down to the magical “Ask twice!” technique.There’s no denying that Sorkin’s shows can be addictive: I couldn’t stop watching “Studio 60,” which was about the making of a “Saturday Night Live”-style sketch show, no matter how hard I tried. That thing was alive! It was lit up with payback, as well as with portraits of Sorkin’s exes so glowing that they were radioactive. The show’s deliriously preening heroes were so memorable that they inspired a set of fictional Twitter feeds, in which the characters live on, making remarks like “Deciding if the satire I’m about to write should be scathing or whip-smart.”“The Newsroom” sounded more promising, journalism being a natural habitat for blowhards. But so far the series lacks the squirmy vigor of “Studio 60,” particularly since Sorkin saps the drama with an odd structural choice. Rather than invent fictional crises, he’s set the show in “the recent past,” so that the plot is literally old news: the BP oil spill, the Tea Party, the Arizona immigration law. That sounds like an innovative concept, but it turns the characters into back-seat drivers, telling us how the news should have been delivered. (Instead of “Broadcast News,” it’s like a sanctimonious “Zelig.”) Naturally, McAvoy slices through crises by “speaking truth to stupid,” in McHale’s words. But he also seizes credit for “breaking stories”—like the political shenanigans of the Koch brothers—that were broken by actual journalists, all of them working in print or online. In the fourth episode, the show injects a real-life tragedy into the mix, pouring a pop ballad over the montage, just the way “E.R.” used to do whenever a busload of massacred toddlers came crashing through the door.There are plenty of terrific actors on this show, but they can’t do much with roles that amount to familiar Sorkinian archetypes. There is the Great Man, who is theoretically flawed, but really a primal truth-teller whom everyone should follow (or date). There are brilliant, accomplished women who are also irrational, high-strung lunatics—the dames and muses who pop their eyes and throw jealous fits when not urging the Great Man on. There are attractively suited young men, from cynical sharpies to idealistic sharpies, who glare and bond and say things like “This right here is always the swan song of the obsolete when they’re staring the future paradigm in the face.”The show features three people of color. The most prominent is an Indian staffer named Neal Sampat, played by Dev Patel. The dialogue makes fun of McAvoy for calling him Punjab and referring to him as “the Indian stereotype of an I.T. guy,” but the show treats Neal with precisely that type of condescension. Neal is a WikiLeaks fan who writes the show’s blog, but he’s a cheerful cipher, a nerd who speaks nerd talk. There are also two African-American producers, who are introduced to the audience when McAvoy—who is publicly memorizing the names of his staff, having been accused of not remembering them—says, “Gary. Kendra. Gary’s a smart black guy who is not afraid to criticize Obama. Kendra got double 800s on her S.A.T.s, makes Gary crazy. I studied.”Nobody reacts, and I suspect we’re supposed to find his behavior charmingly blunt or un-P.C. But, again, neither Gary nor Kendra is at all developed, or given any role in the show’s wince-worthy set of love triangles. It gave me flashbacks to one of the worst plots on “Studio 60,” in which the comic played by D. L. Hughley—the “smart black guy” who was always reading the newspaper—went to a comedy club to anoint the one true young black comic among the hacks and mediocrities. Sorkin’s shows overflow with liberal verities about diversity, but they reproduce a universe in which the Great Man is the natural object of worship, as martyred by gossips as any Philip Roth protagonist.Despite a few bad bets, HBO is on a truly interesting run right now. It has built a solid Sunday lineup, with “Game of Thrones,” the excellent “Girls,” and “Veep,” a political sitcom that just ended its funny, prickly, but also rather dead-hearted début season. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the title role, is a skilled comedienne, and the cast knows how to sling the writer Armando Iannucci’s nasty zingers. And yet the series was so cynical that it somehow felt naïve. When Louis-Dreyfus’s character got pregnant, she promptly miscarried, and then had no meaningful reaction to either condition. This was disappointing, but I still have hope for the second season, when many sitcoms find their feet, as did NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” the one excellent political series on TV.“The Newsroom” is the inverse of “Veep”: it’s so naïve it’s cynical. Sorkin’s fantasy is of a cabal of proud, disdainful brainiacs, a “media élite” who swallow accusations of arrogance and shoot them back as lava. But if the storytelling were more confident, it could take a breath and deliver drama, not just talking points. Instead, the deck stays stacked. Whenever McAvoy delivers a speech or slices up a right-winger, the ensemble beams at him, their eyes glowing as if they were cultists. The series turns Will McAvoy into the equivalent of the character Karen Cartwright, on “Smash,” the performer who the show keeps insisting is God’s gift to Broadway. Can you blame me for rooting for McAvoy’s enemies, all those flyover morons, venal bean-counters, sorority girls, and gun-toting bimbos? Like a political party, a TV show is nothing without a loyal opposition. ♦

S1E10观后拙见如剧中Sloan所言，"the greater fool"是个经济学术语，中译为"博傻理论"。

这个名词我并非初次听说，却对Sorkin据经济学本义做出的新闻人角度引申感到尤为惊艳，忍不住又花时间围绕Episode10做了些功课。

Sorkin借剧中角色之口解释了他心中的"the greater fool"：SLOANThe greater fool is actually an economic term. It's a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool, someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend there lives trying not to be the greater fool. We toss him hot potato. We dive for his seat when the music stops.The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. The whole country was made by greater fools.首先要注明这里的"buy long and sell short"通过联系上下文能猜到是"buy overvalued and sell undervalued assets"之意，但不是金融交易中惯用的表达，脱离语境单拿出"buy long"或"sell short"其实是"买多"和"卖空"。

考虑Sorkin法律背景浓于经济背景，他在创作剧本时大概率是有经济顾问的，用错专业术语的可能性不高，但我尚未见到这两个短语在别处有剧中的含义。

再看Investopidia对"Greater Fool Theory"的定义：The greater fool theory states that it is possible to make money by buying securities, whether or not they are overvalued, by selling them for a profit at a later date. This is because there will always be someone (i.e. a bigger or greater fool) who is willing to pay a higher price.Due diligence is recommended as a strategy to avoid becoming a greater fool.可见经济学是从一个宏观的视角把greater fool视作了经济现象，而Sorkin很清奇地单从greater fool的角度切入，赋予基于"diligence"要"avoid"的一方褒义，挖掘出了更有趣的观点——经济学认为人都该理性，但新闻人恰恰需要这种不理性，国家也是博傻之中建立的。

这是我自封的第一季最高光时刻，一刷时被Sorkin这迷人的脑回路和强有力的语言表达震撼得瞠目结舌。

虽然为了升华扣题而有些断章取义的成分，因为greater fool的"self-delusion and ego"的驱动不是信念和追求而是贪婪和无知，本意是个痴心妄想接盘侠，但Sorkin对博傻概念的加工再创作还是衬得起拥有如此恢宏立意的作品季尾。

-I know what a greater fool is, and I wanna be one.-Camelot. She's the kid at the end of Camelot. Ask me again. Ask me your idiot question again.-What makes America the greatest country in the world?-You do.再就是碎碎念些Sorkin用greater fool挖的坑，烧脑之余欣赏一下Sorkin的讲故事技巧。

不过比起前文探讨的他宏大高级的叙事主题来看，剩下的含义都算家长里短满足边缘观众的八卦趣味了哈哈。

"The Greater Fool"是通过Mac前男友给Will写的新闻报道标题引出的，这种偏偏选Mac和他恋爱时出轨的ex来写稿子的骚操作也只能让观众惊呼，不愧是Will :) "He can get pretty creative with revenge."前男友不白给，稿子内容不出所料直戳肺管：The Greater FoolOne CNN producer remarked, "It's as though McAvoy is unaware of how ridiculous he looks doing what he thinks passes as a Murrow impersonation."A senior VP at parent company AWM laughed as he said, "Will wants to change the world and hates that the world has changed. It's not so much Will McAvoy is old. It's that he is antiquated. His premise is irrelevant and pompous."我个人极度痴迷Sorkin的创作很大程度就在于他打磨每句台词花的精力多到观众看第一遍几乎不可能get到全部内涵和韵律美，这是个"don't assume people who watch TV shows are dumber than people who make them"的精英，虽然有些白左，但作为他的观众"is happy to see smart people against them" :)Who's Murrow？

Edward R. Murrow, in full Edward Egbert Roscoe Murrow, (born April 25, 1908, Greensboro, N.C., U.S.—died April 27, 1965, Pawling, N.Y.), radio and television broadcaster who was the most influential and esteemed figure in American broadcast journalism during its formative years.Murrow was a notable force for the free and uncensored dissemination of information during the American anticommunist hysteria of the early 1950s. In 1954 he produced a notable exposé of the dubious tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had gained prominence with flamboyant charges of communist infiltration of U.S. government agencies.如果说第一句还是单纯的业务困扰，第二句就是暗戳戳的pun，在观众终于了解了voice message的内容后回看才发现好一个"改变世界，世界变了"的双关。

什么Donxiote的mirror，什么reality isn't，Will在说的不只是工作，还有感情的暗示，自以为表白被毙的苦闷，以为Mac已经move on了的自闭。

埋gossip线稳定收视率是有效的，这个坑成了我看第二季的第一动力……Sorkin坏坏地在本季结束只播了message的一半，正卡在love一词之前，连interview里都坚称Will是因为Dorothy Cooper重燃斗志返回newsroom，为避免剧透堪称处心积虑。

能力出众性格直爽的美女配上冷面热心爱的深沉的别扭大叔，莫非是美剧卖萌的标配。

万恶编剧填了坑后，这季的糖甜得吃不消。

听说Mac根本没收到消息之后Will那个小表情和Donxiote cosplay，编剧您不但有城府，幽默感也真不错呢。

Will感情上也是The Greater Fool，单纯字面意思的greater fool。

Mac能毫不掩饰表达爱意和歉意，"You're melting, aren't you? Your heart is full."这动人的情话啧啧～Will那边不但要嗑嗨得"couldn't feel my face"才开口说love，而且连Mac如果听到他示爱能否回应也莫得自信～最后回到Mac前男友写下the greater fool的内涵，是在批判Will坚守新闻界无法坚持的原则的那份狂妄自大，还是在褒奖Will博傻般的行为撑起了整个新闻行业，亦或是在嘲讽Will在爱情面前畏首畏尾的自欺欺人？

We'll never know.

Good evening, I'm Will McAvoy. This is "News Night". And that was a clip of Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief to President George W. Bush, testifying before Congress on March 24, 2004.American liked that moment.I liked that moment.Adults should hold themselves accountable for failure. And so tonight I'm beginning this newscast by joining Mr. Clarke in apologizing to the American people for our failure. The failure of this program during the time I've been in charge of it to successfully inform and educate the American electorate.Let me be clear that I don't apologize on behalf of all broadcast journalists, nor do all broadcast journalists owe an apology. I speak for myself. I was an accomplice to a slow and repeated and unacknowledged and un-amended train wreck of failures that has brought us to now. I'm leader in an industry that miscalled election results, hyped up terror scares, ginned up controversy, and failed to report on tectonic shift in our country. From the collapse of the financial system to the truths about how strong we are to the dangers we actually face. I'm a leader in an industry that misdirected your attention with dexterity of Harry Houdini while sending hundreds of thousands of our bravest young men and women off to war without due diligence.The reason we failed isn't a mystery. We took a dive for the ratings. In the infancy of mass communications, the Columbus and Magellan of broadcast journalism, William Paley and David Sarnoff, went down to Washington to cut a deal with Congress. Congress would allow the fledgling networks free use of taxpayer-owned airwaves in exchange for on public service. That public service would be on hour of air time set aside every night for informational broadcasting, or what we now call the evening news. Congress, unable to anticipate the enormous capacity television would have to deliver consumers to advertisers, failed to include in its deal the one requirement that would have changed our national discourse immeasurably for the better. Congress forgot to add that under no circumstances would there be paid advertising during informational broadcasting. The forgot to say that taxpayers will give you the airwaves for free and for 23 hours a day you should make a profit, but for one hour a night you work for us.And now those network newscasts, anchored though history by honest-to-God newsmen with names like Murrow and Reasoner and Huntley and Brinkley and Buckley and Gronkite and Rather and Russert...now they have to compete with the likes of me. A cable anchor who's in the exact same business as the producers of "Jersey Shore". And that business was good to us, but "News Night" is quitting that business right now. It might come as a surprise to you that some of history's greatest American journalists are working right now, exceptional minds with years of experience and an unshakable devotion to reporting the news. But these voices are a small minority now and they don't stand a chance against the circus when the circus comes to town. They're overmatched. I'm quitting the circus and switching teams. I'm going with the guys who are getting creamed. I'm moved that they still think they can win and I hope they can teach me a thing or two. From this moment on, we'll be deciding what goes on our air and how it's presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. We'll endeavor to put information in a broadcast context because we know that very little news is born at the moment it comes across our wire. We'll be the champion of facts and the moral enemy of innuendo, speculation, hyperbole and nonsense. We're not waiter in a restaurant serving you the stories you asked for just the way you like them prepared. Nor are we computers dispensing context of humanity. I'll make no effort to subdue my personal opinions. I'll make every effort to expose you to informed opinions that are different from my own.You may ask who are we to make these decisions. We are Mackenzie McHale and myself. Miss McHale is our executive producer. She marshals the recourses of over 100 reporters, producers, analysts, technicians, and her credentials are readily available. I'm "News Night" 's managing editor and make the final decision on every seen and heard on this program. Who are we make these decisions? We're the Media Elite. 好久没有听写这么长的段落了，看大叔飙台词有一种难以描述的痛快淋漓，心潮澎湃的赶脚The West Wing之后好像很久没看过这么精彩的思路PK剧了哎，太容易被大叔的个人魅力征服了……

决定学播音记者这个专业的时候，我的很多朋友都不理解，说这么个不lucrative又不安全稳定的事情有什么可做的，在美国这边不好找工作，回国又在这边 freedom of speech 的教育下不会适应。

其实我也不是圣人，对自己的理想也不是那么确定。

但我对新闻的梦想和热情在偶尔的怀疑和畏难中居然一点点成长。

和大家分享两个记忆深刻的瞬间：1 去年帆船比赛，我和teammate 抗着机器在查尔斯河上的大桥正中间 找到很好的位置，等啊等，等他们划过来的时候开始拍正脸。

当时不觉得，回去剪片子的时候被景色给震撼了：当时正是一个阴天的下午，一切在镜头里显得那么清晰；天低而平静，河面安静而广阔，岸边加油的声音反而在比赛的学生运动员的激烈竞争中显得模糊而遥远。

渐渐地他们划远了，连背影都看不见了，但远远看到有一群鹅突然一起飞起来。

一切都是那么安静有力量，等待爆发。

2 去年秋天北美爆发的“占领运动”。

我去拍片子。

当天听说他们准备以当地美联储办公楼作为游行的开端，我和一帮记者就在那里等。

新闻现场的感觉是很爽的：停着不同电台的车，不同的现场主持人。

结果那帮游行的人选了另外一条路通向美联储的楼，大家远远看见游行队伍的前端逐渐靠近，全兵荒马乱抗起机器就往新的路线跑（因为要赶在游行队伍前拍正脸，游行的人应该是走向镜头的，而不是拍人家脚后跟和屁股）。

换句话说，我们必须抗着机器比他们先跑到美联储大门门口。

我的机器相对业余而小，所以我一扛就扛肩上，一手三脚架，一手背着三个包（我自己的包，三脚架包，机器包）。

真是喘粗气跑到那里，赶紧架上机器，调整。

时间刚刚好 - 游行的队伍正朝着我的方向走来，喊着"We - Are - the 99 percent! We - Are - the 99 percent!" 他们逆光走来，声音磅礴震天，标语漫天飞舞，警察的车和摩托大灯全开，警笛高鸣，腰间别着荷枪实弹，把美联储大门堵死，游行者用单薄的自行车对抗警察的摩托， 扶车把的手发抖。

那个瞬间，站在这喧闹世界的正中心，我从未觉得如此安静。

我从没离我的梦想这么近。

献给所有有同样梦想的你们。

原文：http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/06/25/120625crte_television_nussbaum （趁《新闻编辑室》热度还未退烧之际，正巧今天又爆出Maggie扮演者Alison Pill的裸照事件，试译了纽约客杂志剧评人Emily Nussbaum之前写的一篇著名恶评。

我个人还是挺喜欢这剧的，但Emily的分析也给了我些小启发，尽管她是位挺装的剧评人…）　　 　　《新闻编辑室》装腔作势的“炫智”表演 　　 　　 “我很友善啊！

”Will McAvoy在阿伦索金的HBO新剧《新闻编辑室》第一集里喊到。

McAvoy(Jeff Daniels饰)是一位脾气火爆的新闻主播，但他最大的特点又是讨人喜欢，并且编剧在这点上刻画得很成功。

与此同时，这也是个难能可贵的自嘲桥段（指Will说自己友善）——当然在此之后我便对这剧彻底失去了兴趣。

在《新闻编辑室》里，那些聪明的人们互相欣赏，他们歌唱着真相的咏叹调，他们旨在电视新闻的改革：“这是一档全新的节目，一切的规章制度都是彻底翻新的，”剧中这位标新立异的执行制作人在不同场合以不同形式宣扬着这点。

剧中人物的激情四溢与血脉贲张是如此具有煽动性，其程度足以达到一场类似道德湿疹般的炎症——可惜只会让观众浑身发痒。

　　 　　 　　 　　 如果你赞成剧中传达的政见的话，那么这剧并不是全然不值得看的。

正当McAvoy，这位毫无争议性的、被大家开玩笑称呼为雷诺的有线电视大佬（杰.雷诺，NBC脱口秀主持人。

McAvoy看起来什么都不在乎，颇有雷诺风范），被一个新闻学院的座谈小组给为难住时，我们便知道，这剧从一开始，就十分到位得向《电视台风云》里那个感染性强、“我气疯了”般的夸夸其谈致敬。

当主持人逼着他正面回答究竟为什么美国是最伟大的国家时，他突然爆发了，细数着一个个美国不配成为“最伟大国家”的原因，然后以一段有关过去的美国如何能够承载希望的陈词作为总结。

这段发言瞬间红遍全国上下，他的老板（Sam Waterston饰）和他的制片人兼前任，MacKenzie McHale(Emily Mortimer饰)，随即鼓励他去开设一档纯粹的、全然不顾收视率或公众关注的娱乐议点的新闻节目。

　　 　　 　　 　　 McAvoy的不少长篇抨击言论其实都是不折不扣的扯淡——是一个对根本没有存在过的美国社会的错误怀旧——尽管这看起来还挺有趣。

当然了，如果你喜欢索金另一部对布什政府唱着强有力反调的《白宫风云》，那你可能会产生些共鸣。

《新闻编辑室》的第一集里充满了咆哮与自我感觉良好的论调，不过这也是个很有意思的现象，就像出现在《白宫风云》，《体育之夜》以及他的畅销片《社交网络》里的那些一样。

第二集尽管有一个关于McAvoy嘲讽了右翼蠢货们的情节还比较过瘾，但总体来说，却充斥着更多虚假和做作的虔诚。

在此之后，这剧就一下子变得异常差劲，变化的速度之快以及差劲的程度之深真把我震惊得连下巴都快脱落了。

第三集是如此乏善可陈（这根本就是利用蒙太奇手法拼贴起来的讲座集锦）。

第四集是最难看的。

不敢想象这之后还剩下六集之多。

　　 　　 　　 　　 索金一直被认为是当代电视业独树一帜的导演之一，一位不折不扣的发明家和一个原创的声音。

但他充其量也不过是同样热爱高谈阔论、观点相冲的辩论赛形式和以疯狂对话向荒诞喜剧时代致敬的芸芸编剧里的一员而已。

虽然有些说笑还是很智慧的；但大多数情况下，这只是一种装腔作势的“炫智”表演，基于一个定律：说得越多，你越聪明。

除了索金之外，编剧列表里还包括Shonda Rhimes（写过凯丽华盛顿主演的剧情片《丑闻》，该剧中也有些是《白宫风云》的演员）和《吉尔莫女孩》的编剧艾米.谢曼.帕拉迪诺（新片《心舞》也是她的作品）。

按理说，索金理应高出他的同行一截：他善于写更俗世的题材，在剧情创作上废更多的话。

并且很显然，有不少观众很吃这一套：在索金那部极度糟糕的、惊为天人的《日落大道60号》被叫停后的几年里，我仍然时常碰到有观众认为，美国人是太愚蠢了所以才看不懂那剧。

　　 　　 　　 　　 这时丹拉瑟估计会说，这根本是条不会捕猎的狗（即that’s bullshit.丹拉瑟在节目里很爱引用这句话）。

索金的剧有种很奇怪的魔力，那就是往往那些从来不看电视的人会认为他的剧比其他所有的电视节目都好看。

这剧弥漫着挑衅意味的智商优越感；可剧中的具体内容，比如那些瓦格纳式的高谈阔论，用手指戳胸，愤怒了猛击桌子等等，与这种优越感根本不符。

实际上，《新闻编辑室》就是把观众当蠢货来对待：里面提到的新闻事件，我们都亲身经历过；当其中一个员工玩点噱头(比方说对大脚怪的痴迷)，他会一遍遍地重复；在第四集里，还要给一个回顾第三集的镜头。

在最近的一次采访中，索金谈起警匪剧似乎挺不屑，但他这种苏格拉底式的调侃，其实也和警匪剧惯用的神奇的“问两遍你就会乖乖把事实招了的伎俩”，差不了多少。

（例如，在索金指导的另一部影片《好人寥寥》中，汤姆克鲁斯和杰克尼克尔森的这段对话就能很清楚地说明这种伎俩：汤姆: 告诉我真相！

杰克：不，你承受不起的！

汤姆：你执行了“红色法规”是不是？！

杰克：是的！

汤姆就在问了杰克两遍同样问题后，得到了真实的回答，逆转了被动的局势。

） 　　 　　 　　 　　 我不否认索金的剧很容易上瘾：我对《日落大道60号》这部相当于如何制作“周六夜现场”这类短喜剧的片子欲罢不能。

我的天，这种好剧本居然还存在着！

这剧本根本就是充斥着一轮轮的报复，就像索金在剧中刻画的自己和前任们呈现出的丑恶嘴脸那样。

片子里那些神志不清、冠冕堂皇的男主人公给人们留下了如此深刻的印象以至于有人还在微博上模仿剧中人物开了一个虚拟账号，并且发“啊，让我想想这篇挖苦文我该写得尖刻刻薄点还是聪明智慧点”之类的微博。

　　 　　 　　 　　 对于典型索金剧中自恃甚高的角色们而言，《新闻编辑室》要更适合这些人：传媒俨然成为了他们又一个装逼的温床。

但看起来到目前为止，这剧缺少了《日落大道60号》里那些感性得让人腻歪的活力，特别是当索金选择了一种奇怪的叙事结构后，《新》的戏剧性就更加削弱了。

比起制造虚假的危机，他把这剧的时间定位在“不久的过去”，所以情节里涉及的事件自然都是老新闻了：英国石油公司漏油事件，茶党问题，亚利桑那州移民法案等。

这听起来好像是个挺有创意的想法；但实则，他把这些剧中人物都变成了一个个爱指手画脚的人，不厌其烦得告诉观众那些新闻本该怎么播。

相比较《收播新闻》（87年一部爱情喜剧，辛普森编剧詹姆斯布鲁克斯执导），这更像是一个道貌岸然的“瑞力克”。

（83年影片《西力传》主人公，伍迪艾伦执导）自然地，根据McHale的原话，McAvoy 是通过“把真相告诉蠢货们”来一步步化解危机。

但是他也顾及到了一些“突发新闻”——比如说石油大亨科赫兄弟的政治阴谋——这些在现实世界里也被各类媒体报道过。

在第四集里，竟然还穿插了一个真实生活里的悲剧（女参议员被击中头部，生死未卜那段），把煽情的流行小曲作为背景乐，这像极了《急诊室的故事》里当有一车受害孩童被送进医院急救时，医生护士总要大力撞门那样。

这剧有不少很优秀的演员，但他们还不是索金式的典型人物。

有这么一个伟大的男人，理论上来说人都是有缺陷的，但他不说假话，每个人理应都该顺从他（或想与他约会）；也有不少聪明的、事业有成的女性很感情用事，犯神经质——当这位伟大的男主角和另外的女人在谈话时，这些夫人或女神们便瞪大了眼睛，妒火冲天得望着他。

剧中也有愤青或理想式的、穿着体面魅力四射的油滑男人，这些人也会经常心心相应得愤怒地说：“当未来的商业模式已经摆在眼前，我们现在熟悉的提倡的都将会被淘汰了啊！

” 　　 　　 　　 　　 出现在这部剧里主要有三种种族的人。

最显著的一个例子是有一位名叫Neal Sampat的印度员工（Dev Patel饰）。

Neal嘲笑McAvoy，说他是旁遮普人，解释给McAvoy听就是典型的印度IT男，但这剧又恰好把Neal刻画成那样充满优越感的印度IT男形象。

Neal是维基解密网的粉丝，并且负责为剧中他们这档新闻节目写博客，但他也只是个打了鸡血的庸才（原文是a cheerful cipher，cipher字面意思是庸才，其实也是电影编剧常设置的一种角色：看起来像一块白板，所有人都喜欢向这类人倾诉心事或表达想法，以这种外来的thought projection充实这类角色，让其渐渐显露出自己的个性。

Eg. 《黑客帝国》的尼尔就是一个cipher，他总是眼神放空，从不表露心计）, 一个书呆子模样的人说着书呆子会说的话。

剧中角色里还有两位非裔美国制片人。

当McAvoy在大伙面前回忆他手下的名字，并且因为记不住而受到他人控诉时，这两位非裔美国人便凭借这样的介绍词让观众们认识了：“我做过研究，这两位是Gary和Kendra。

盖里是一位勇于批评奥巴马的聪明黑人小伙，而Kendra在SAT考试里，文理科部分都拿了满分，这会让盖里很崩溃。

” 　　 　　 　　 　　 介绍完后呢？

没人有任何反应，并且我怀疑我们是否该认为他这种介绍的行为是一种掩盖得很好的瞧不起或者带有种族歧视在里的。

但是，盖里或者Kendra在之后的剧情里根本就没什么戏份，或者牵扯进剧里那些令人不寒而栗的三角恋。

这让我想起了《日落大道60号》里最糟糕的情节之一——一个由D.L.Hughley扮演的喜剧演员——这个“聪明的黑人小伙”总爱在那儿读报纸——有一次，他去了一家喜剧俱乐部挖掘，在一群绣花枕头和平庸之辈里挖掘了一个很有天赋的黑人小伙。

（这里说糟糕是因为这段情节非常带种族歧视意味，除了被选中的小伙外，片中其他的黑人都看起来愚昧不堪）索金的剧充斥着对多元文化说教式的真理，但这些角色却重塑了一个这样的世界：老克腊式的白人直男理应是种受人膜拜的自然物种，但他却被流言蜚语击垮，如同菲利普.罗斯小说里的角色那样。

（索金想把McAvoy塑造成个完人，但又不到位。

Great Man通常指精英、理想主义者，Emily这段主要把重心放在索金的种族/性别歧视观念上，所以要将此概念再细化，具体点便是特指潇洒有型的白人老直男。

菲利普.罗斯是位犹太小说家，多以社会矛盾为创作主题，不少书中人物都有心灵恐惧。

父母在纳粹屠杀中幸免于难。

） 　　 　　 　　 　　 尽管有些失败的剧本, HBO电视台现在的节目还是挺有看头的。

周日有一组固定的节目编排，从《权力的游戏》，精彩到爆的《都市女孩》，以及刚结束了滑稽、棘手又冷血无情的政治情景喜剧《二当家》的第一季播放。

这部剧的主演是茱莉亚.路易斯.德瑞弗斯，她是一位技艺精湛的喜剧演员，并且她演的角色知道怎么对作家用上编剧阿尔曼多.伊安奴奇机智的毒舌反驳。

不过这剧又因为太愤青了反而在某种程度上显得特别幼稚。

路易斯.德瑞弗斯这个角色刚一怀孕，就莫名流产了，并且此后的情节里再没有任何人对其怀孕或者流产产生过任何回应。

这太让人失望了，但我还是挺期待第二季的，毕竟有许多情景喜剧都是一部比一部出彩，就像NBC这部精彩的政治情景喜剧《公园与游憩》一样。

　　 　　 　　 　　 而《新闻编辑室》与《二当家》恰恰相反：他是既幼稚又愤青。

索金的美妙幻想是一个骄傲自大的小团体，目空一切的天才们以及一个个可以把所有对他优越感爆棚的控诉统统吃进，并以熔岩般的冲击力一一反击的“媒体精英”。

但若这个故事说得再自信点，那么我们又可以纯当戏剧看，而不只是一本正经得在那儿论证。

可事实却是，索金把拍电视应有的戏剧性强塞进他酷爱的这套说教式议程里。

因此，这故事叙述就显得很不自然了。

无论何时，只要当McAvoy发表演说或者抨击右翼党，所有人都对着他微笑，他们的目光是那样炯炯有神仿佛是搞宗教崇拜的异教徒。

这剧把Will McAvoy变成了和《名声大噪》里Karen Cartwright差不多的人物：这位剧中的表演者就一直被认定为是“上帝赐予百老汇的礼物”。

你能怪我对McAvoy的敌人——那些农村来的乡巴佬，贪赃枉法的管钱老板，妇女联谊会的女孩以及随身带枪的放荡女人——报以极大的同情么？

一部电视剧就像一个政党，如果没有“忠实的反对派”，那就毫无价值可言。

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“I’m affable!” Will McAvoy yells in the pilot of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series. McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) is an irascible anchor whose brand is likability, and it’s a good line, delivered well. It is also a rare moment of self-mockery—and one of the last sequences I was on board for in the series. In “The Newsroom,” clever people take turns admiring one another. They sing arias of facts. They aim to remake television news: “This is a new show, and there are new rules,” a maverick executive producer announces, several times, in several ways. Their outrage is so inflamed that it amounts to a form of moral eczema—only it makes the viewer itch.This is not to say that “The Newsroom” doesn’t score points now and then, if you share its politics. It starts effectively enough, with an homage to “Network” ’s galvanizing “I’m mad as hell” rant, as McAvoy, a blandly uncontroversial cable big shot whom everyone tauntingly calls Leno, is trapped on a journalism-school panel. When the moderator needles him into answering a question about why America is the greatest country on earth, he goes volcanic, ticking off the ways in which America is no such thing, then closing with a statement of hope, about the way things used to be. This speech goes viral, and his boss (Sam Waterston) and his producer, MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), who’s also his ex-girlfriend, encourage him to create a purer news program, purged of any obsession with ratings and buzz.Much of McAvoy’s diatribe is bona-fide baloney—false nostalgia for an America that never existed—but it is exciting to watch. And if you enjoyed “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s helpful counterprogramming to the Bush Administration, your ears will prick up. The pilot of “The Newsroom” is full of yelling and self-righteousness, but it’s got energy, just like “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and his hit movie “The Social Network.” The second episode is more obviously stuffed with piety and syrup, although there’s one amusing segment, when McAvoy mocks some right-wing idiots. After that, “The Newsroom” gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping. The third episode is lousy (and devolves into lectures that are chopped into montages). The fourth episode is the worst. There are six to go.Sorkin is often presented as one of the auteurs of modern television, an innovator and an original voice. But he’s more logically placed in a school of showrunners who favor patterspeak, point-counterpoint, and dialogue-driven tributes to the era of screwball romance. Some of this banter is intelligent; just as often, however, it’s artificial intelligence, predicated on the notion that more words equals smarter. Besides Sorkin, these creators include Shonda Rhimes (whose Washington melodrama, “Scandal,” employs cast members from “The West Wing”); Amy Sherman-Palladino, of “The Gilmore Girls” (and the appealing new “Bunheads”); and David E. Kelley, who created “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Legal.” Sorkin is supposed to be on a different level from his peers: longer words, worldlier topics. And many viewers clearly buy into this idea: years after Sorkin’s terrible, fascinating “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was cancelled, I still occasionally run into someone who insists that Americans were just too stupid to get it.As Dan Rather might put it, that dog won’t hunt. Sorkin’s shows are the type that people who never watch TV are always claiming are better than anything else on TV. The shows’ air of defiant intellectual superiority is rarely backed up by what’s inside—all those Wagnerian rants, fingers poked in chests, palms slammed on desks, and so on. In fact, “The Newsroom” treats the audience as though we were extremely stupid. Characters describe events we’ve just witnessed. When a cast member gets a shtick (like an obsession with Bigfoot), he delivers it over and over. In episode four, there’s a flashback to episode three. In a recent interview, Sorkin spoke patronizingly of cop shows, but his Socratic flirtations are frequently just as formulaic, right down to the magical “Ask twice!” technique.There’s no denying that Sorkin’s shows can be addictive: I couldn’t stop watching “Studio 60,” which was about the making of a “Saturday Night Live”-style sketch show, no matter how hard I tried. That thing was alive! It was lit up with payback, as well as with portraits of Sorkin’s exes so glowing that they were radioactive. The show’s deliriously preening heroes were so memorable that they inspired a set of fictional Twitter feeds, in which the characters live on, making remarks like “Deciding if the satire I’m about to write should be scathing or whip-smart.”“The Newsroom” sounded more promising, journalism being a natural habitat for blowhards. But so far the series lacks the squirmy vigor of “Studio 60,” particularly since Sorkin saps the drama with an odd structural choice. Rather than invent fictional crises, he’s set the show in “the recent past,” so that the plot is literally old news: the BP oil spill, the Tea Party, the Arizona immigration law. That sounds like an innovative concept, but it turns the characters into back-seat drivers, telling us how the news should have been delivered. (Instead of “Broadcast News,” it’s like a sanctimonious “Zelig.”) Naturally, McAvoy slices through crises by “speaking truth to stupid,” in McHale’s words. But he also seizes credit for “breaking stories”—like the political shenanigans of the Koch brothers—that were broken by actual journalists, all of them working in print or online. In the fourth episode, the show injects a real-life tragedy into the mix, pouring a pop ballad over the montage, just the way “E.R.” used to do whenever a busload of massacred toddlers came crashing through the door.There are plenty of terrific actors on this show, but they can’t do much with roles that amount to familiar Sorkinian archetypes. There is the Great Man, who is theoretically flawed, but really a primal truth-teller whom everyone should follow (or date). There are brilliant, accomplished women who are also irrational, high-strung lunatics—the dames and muses who pop their eyes and throw jealous fits when not urging the Great Man on. There are attractively suited young men, from cynical sharpies to idealistic sharpies, who glare and bond and say things like “This right here is always the swan song of the obsolete when they’re staring the future paradigm in the face.”The show features three people of color. The most prominent is an Indian staffer named Neal Sampat, played by Dev Patel. The dialogue makes fun of McAvoy for calling him Punjab and referring to him as “the Indian stereotype of an I.T. guy,” but the show treats Neal with precisely that type of condescension. Neal is a WikiLeaks fan who writes the show’s blog, but he’s a cheerful cipher, a nerd who speaks nerd talk. There are also two African-American producers, who are introduced to the audience when McAvoy—who is publicly memorizing the names of his staff, having been accused of not remembering them—says, “Gary. Kendra. Gary’s a smart black guy who is not afraid to criticize Obama. Kendra got double 800s on her S.A.T.s, makes Gary crazy. I studied.”Nobody reacts, and I suspect we’re supposed to find his behavior charmingly blunt or un-P.C. But, again, neither Gary nor Kendra is at all developed, or given any role in the show’s wince-worthy set of love triangles. It gave me flashbacks to one of the worst plots on “Studio 60,” in which the comic played by D. L. Hughley—the “smart black guy” who was always reading the newspaper—went to a comedy club to anoint the one true young black comic among the hacks and mediocrities. Sorkin’s shows overflow with liberal verities about diversity, but they reproduce a universe in which the Great Man is the natural object of worship, as martyred by gossips as any Philip Roth protagonist.Despite a few bad bets, HBO is on a truly interesting run right now. It has built a solid Sunday lineup, with “Game of Thrones,” the excellent “Girls,” and “Veep,” a political sitcom that just ended its funny, prickly, but also rather dead-hearted début season. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the title role, is a skilled comedienne, and the cast knows how to sling the writer Armando Iannucci’s nasty zingers. And yet the series was so cynical that it somehow felt naïve. When Louis-Dreyfus’s character got pregnant, she promptly miscarried, and then had no meaningful reaction to either condition. This was disappointing, but I still have hope for the second season, when many sitcoms find their feet, as did NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” the one excellent political series on TV.“The Newsroom” is the inverse of “Veep”: it’s so naïve it’s cynical. Sorkin’s fantasy is of a cabal of proud, disdainful brainiacs, a “media élite” who swallow accusations of arrogance and shoot them back as lava. But if the storytelling were more confident, it could take a breath and deliver drama, not just talking points. Instead, the deck stays stacked. Whenever McAvoy deliversf a speech or slices up a right-winger, the ensemble beams at him, their eyes glowing as if they were cultists. The series turns Will McAvoy into the equivalent of the character Karen Cartwright, on “Smash,” the performer who the show keeps insisting is God’s gift to Broadway. Can you blame me for rooting for McAvoy’s enemies, all those flyover morons, venal bean-counters, sorority girls, and gun-toting bimbos? Like a political party, a TV show is nothing without a loyal opposition. 来源：http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/06/25/120625crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all

首先我要说明的一点是，我并没有打算在这篇剧评里隐射任何现实，请不要多做联想。

大概是在播出一个星期后，我才将《新闻编辑室》（The Newsroom）第一季第03集“第112届国会”（The 112th Congress）翻出来看完。

这一集在微博上的讨论可谓是毁誉参半，其实在第02集的小失落之后，我也担心第03集会出现更大的水平下降。

而事实上是，第03集的热血程度并不低于第01集。

而且相较于第01集，编剧们在抨击了一种现实之后，提出了另一种可能性。

在写剧评之前，我们有必要来讨论下我对美国茶党（Tea Party）的看法。

事实上，这个松散的政治组织出来的时候，很多美国人都对它抱有支持的态度。

毕竟美国建国就始于波士顿倾茶事件，故而自命为当年“倾茶党”继承者的“茶党”自然获得了不少人的支持。

而且相较于传统的政客们，茶党的政治人物频繁利用Twitter、Facebook和YouTube进行宣传，亲民形象远远好于一般的政客。

这倒是让我想起了日本的AKB48组合，如果说AKB48是“可以面对面的偶像”的话，那么茶党无疑就是政治界的AKB48，他们也是一群可以面对面的政客。

茶党的政治诉求其实很简单，他们认为美国现在不再属于美国人民，而是属于一些利益集团和政客。

其实这倒是让我觉得挺可笑的，美国不是一直推崇“精英政治”和“代议政治”么？

什么时候美国民众忽然发现自己的选举权其实并没有那么完美了？

而且更为可笑的是，茶党的推举出来的政客大多没有什么执政理念，他们的观点就是打倒政府，搞臭奥巴马……这个倒是让我想起了中国的文革，美国国会掌握在一小撮走资派的手里，所以广大革命小将们要起来造他们的反。

可问题在于，中国的实践已经证明了文革是行不通的，美国有何苦来哉？

而且最为可笑的是，美国茶党最初是以激进派民主党形象出现，结果呢？

他们是一群比保守派共和党人更保守的极端保守派……他们反对给予LGBT人士相关人权，他们反对尊重有色人种，他们反对自由流产……他们甚至反对最低工资和鼓吹美国部份地区已经被伊斯兰极端主义所控制。

总之，茶党的目的就是吓唬美国公民，你们不选举我们，你们就会被撒旦统治。

可是殊不知这茶党并不比撒旦正义多少……当然，最重要的是，美国的茶党人士是一群只会破坏，却不懂建设的政客。

的确，破坏永远比建设容易。

因此对于政客们来说，破坏比建设更容易出政绩……只是，如果美国真的来一场“破四旧”和“铲除黑五类”的运动的话，美国还是美国么？

我们来说说这一集。

在《白宫风云》了，巴特勒总统是一名自由派民主党总统。

但是为了他的祖国，他依然会选择与共和党合作。

无论是巴特勒总统本人，还是里奥·马加瑞幕僚长或者乔希副幕僚长，他们并不认为民主党团队入白宫，就代表这个国家完全属于民主党了。

在《白宫风云》第四季第23集“第25号修正案”一集里，巴特勒总统就面对了他职位与他身份的冲突，因为他最小的女儿被国外的恐怖分子绑架了。

按照美国的国策，美国是不会与任何恐怖分子谈判或妥协的，但是身为父亲他无法亲自开口说这样的话。

因此巴特勒总统在那一集里签署了一条行政法令，援引《美国宪法第25修正案》而暂时放弃总统职位。

即便当时副总统职位出缺，第三顺位继承人乃是保守派共和党人。

但是面对国家，巴特勒总统还是履行人民赋予他的职责。

而在《新闻编辑室》里，麦卡沃伊主播则是一个温和派的共和党新闻主播，他热爱共和党的政治理念，也热爱美国的政治制度。

虽然茶党事实上是共和党极端保守派炮制的政治组织，但是为了捍卫政治理念和宪法，麦卡沃伊团队还是在新闻节目里如实揭露了茶党的面目，并抨击那些获选的美国茶党政治人物。

即便意味着他的新闻节目可能会被电视台抛弃。

《白宫风云》中有个让我印象深刻的共和党金发女孩，虽然她并不被白宫里的大多数人喜欢。

但是总统和幕僚长却决定留下她，因为他们认为她爱着这个国家，而政府需要这样的人来服务。

并不能因为她的政党而将她排斥在政府之外。

而这个女孩也跟她的共和党朋友说了，她并不认同民主党，也认为大家可以指责他们的执政理念，但是却不能攻击这些民主党人不爱国。

而在《新闻编辑室》里也出现了一个类似的人，一位共和党资深众议员居然在初选中败给了一个初出茅庐的牙医。

仅仅是一位这位众议员拒绝对美国总统进行人身攻击，保持自己的政治风度。

可是选民却不吃这一套，他们将社会主义份子、共产党员等标签贴在了美国总统身上。

（奥观海同志，您辛苦了！

）更重要的是，共和党议员因为和民主党议员连署一项议案被人认为是背叛，殊不知这项议案是为了救助无家可归的退伍老兵。

在这一集里，简方达登场了。

目前来看，她将是麦卡沃伊进行新闻改革的最大阻力。

【备注：本文依据“署名-非商业性使用-相同方式共享 2.5 中国大陆 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5) ”协议释出版权。

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