Salon has a review up of Aaron Sorkin’s new series:

Listening to the characters on “Newsroom” fervently call for a better kind of news, one begins to think, “Yeah! Why hasn’t someone given us the totally objective, bullshit-detecting, junk-eschewing, civic-minded news show that proves all liberals are right?” The answer isn’t, as “Newsroom” would have it, that everyone in the news business is scared, greedy, crass, jaded, ratings obsessed and/or stupid. It’s that there already are people making this kind of news program and it hasn’t made much of a difference. Whatever one’s personal feelings about Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart or Shepard Smith, these are news anchors who are all, like Will McAvoy, attempting to speak truth to power, call bullshit on bullshit, and inform the electorate. And are we less polarized because of their efforts? Look, there’s a guy in the White House who gives speeches nearly as good as “The West Wing’s” Josiah Bartlet and what does he have to show for it?

What’s interesting is how this overlaps exactly with the concept of Sorkin’s failed series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which bizarrely argued that what America needs now is a really good, politically-charged, socially-conscious late-night sketch comedy program. Sorkin, like many liberals, believes that if only Americans hear the right side of the issues, if only they get out there into the marketplace of ideas, they will naturally rise to the top because they’re clearly superior to right-wing pabulum. Perhaps this is an age thing, but the idea of a self-regulating, free marketplace of ideas seems like a pretty ridiculous concept to a person like myself, who has grown up in the era of FOX News, the Washington Post’s “Neocons need not apply” editorial page, ridiculously high campaign spending, and so on. It’s precisely an unfair market for ideas not based on a plutocratic philosophy (though it’s slightly better for ideas not based on neanderthal social values), and ultimately Sorkin would be better off spending his time showing how that market has broken down. But he sticks with the comforting classical liberal ideology of a self-regulating market of ideas, once again.

The bigger problem with Studio 60 (and, it sounds like, with The Newsroom) is that Sorkin’s TV work has become insufferably didactic. It was entirely possible to enjoy The West Wing without buying into its politics, because the series was rooted in strong character relationships and a setting that provided for good workplace drama. Same with Sports Night. But it wasn’t really possible to get into Studio 60 unless you bought the idea that sketch comedy, of all things, was supposed to be a mechanism by which America fixed its problems, and that the people who made it happen were incredible geniuses. That’s the only way not to want to punch each and every one of the insufferable dicks the show forced us to hang with every week. This is how the review ends:

At the end of giving his speech about why America is not the greatest country in the world, Will reminds the assembled crowd that it used to be. “We stood up for what was right,” he says, “We fought for moral reasons, we passed laws, we struck down laws for moral reasons.” I am as terrified by wingnuts as Will McAvoy, but to describe those Americans we don’t agree with as being unconcerned with morals is, unfortunately, to miss all that is so raw and intractable about, to name just one example, the abortion debate. Will McAvoy, the brilliant, feisty, fierce, dedicated protagonist, is making a specious argument. Which is fitting, since Will McAvoy, a Republican who believes in almost everything liberals do, is a totally specious character, and “Newsroom,” a show about how much better America would be if it only had one really great television program, is a totally specious series.

The thing is, Sorkin really seems to believe this, or else he wouldn’t build show after show around it.