Actors, straight-faced liars, and SJWs
You don’t have to watch the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show to be affected by it. The dramedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon (who are also co-producers) is the only TV series to address the sociological phenomenon of TV news programming, showing how it reflects and influences the state of our cultural politics.
That’s not praise. The Morning Show is completely phony — imagine an atomized version of the old The Mary Tyler Moore Show (where episodes already softly spoofed the liberalism of both Ms. Magazine and the Pentagon Papers). Lacking James L. Brooks’s inspired wit, The Morning Show mistakes its sitcom premise for a petri dish of social-justice issues. The problem is, this pseudo-serious self-righteousness is the source of the pretense we’ve been assaulted by on actual TV news programming: Dana Bash’s sham interview with Kamala Harris on CNN, the prejudicial presidential debate set-up on ABC — all those news presentations where female anchors regularly play out the political biases of their networks by affecting erudition, seriousness, and righteousness. But it’s all an act.
Look at the faces of the most prominent TV-newswomen — those Aniston and Witherspoon imitators. They’re the media equivalent of government bureaucrats who appear before Congress and lie with straight faces. Such prevarication renders The Morning Show redundant. The fantasy of media integrity prevents viewers from understanding just how detrimental this politicized version of egomaniacal show business can be.
The CNN girls are the worst — Bash, Kaitlan Collins, and Abby Phillip present the stoniest, phoniest faces, especially when interviewing conservatives and interjecting judgmental corrections (“fact-checking”). It’s never in the interest of truth; instead, such bad behavior asserts their individual sense of superiority. Their entitlement is unmistakable.
If you saw Bash’s head-jerks and flinching when J. D. Vance recently pushed back against her blatant bias, her façade of feminist defensiveness began to crack. These non-actresses utilize attack-first ploys (even when asking questions), with the objective of scoring points or goals. The prototype for this Fake News performance first appeared on “White Noise,” the third episode of the third season of The Morning Show, which aired in September 2023.
It was an unrepentant illustration of Millennial TV audacity — an extension of Aniston and Witherspoon’s ceiling-smashing sisterhood. Actress Nicole Beharie plays Christina Hunter, the newly hired black anchorwoman at the United Broadcast Association (UBA). The network’s board of directors’ old and out-of-touch matriarch, Cybil Richards (Holland Taylor), slips and refers to Hunter as “Aunt Jemima.” In a face- and network-saving effort, the old gray lady (Richards, as in Mary Tyler Moore’s Mary Richards?) submits herself to an on-air grilling by Hunter — the grim sitcom a planned lesson in political indoctrination and forced assimilation. Viewers take heed.
The episode peaks when Hunter issues a challenge: “Is that how you see us? On your watch, you let people of color be systematically devalued. Is that something to be casual about?” The show’s black female producer, Karen Pittman (Mia Jordan), orders the camera to “push in until you see [Richards’s] pores.” The flustered crone pleads, “You have to be grateful.” And Hunter moves in for the kill: “There it is!,” Pittman exults. There’s no way out when the media play this game of social-justice/systemic-racist gotcha. In this infamous reeducation episode, Beharie’s comportment and physical resemblance to CNN’s Abby Phillip are uncanny — a confirmation of network practice. Beharie’s Hunter even pretends to pull her punches, like Phillip’s cold stare — what’s campily referred to in the fashion world as “RBF.” It’s a form of gender aggression common to the method of TV anchors (even Don Lemon does it) who interrogate conservative guests, waiting to pounce.
Since the makers of The Morning Show know this, why should we pretend we don’t? The only hint of realism on The Morning Show comes from its being based on the book Top of the Morning, by deposed CNN anchorman Brian Stelter, fabricating his own network experiences while paying tribute to his wife Jamie Stelter, who works on Spectrum TV’s far-left New York 1 station. Since its debut, The Morning Show has become the template for TV news liberalism, with Aniston, Witherspoon, and other female cast members acting as models for the behavior of the nation’s TV newswomen.
In England, talking heads on TV news shows are called newsreaders. In America, they’re called journalists, and therein lies the problem. We’re encouraged to take those talking heads seriously — so seriously that they’re allowed to “moderate” our presidential debates, with disastrous results for everyone.
New York Post reporter Miranda Devine precisely described David Muir, the co-moderator of ABC’s September 9 presidential debate, as having “the bland demeanor of the impartial newsreader.” But Muir’s co-moderator, Linsey Davis, was a different case: Davis wore a mannish, gray suit jacket and struck a pose of martinet — almost schoolmarmish — solemnity. Her attitudinizing is the distaff version of David Muir’s equally treacherous blandness.
Roland Barthes’s 1957 essay “The Face of Garbo,” taught in academic media-theory classes, defined an archetype that “leans toward the fascination of mortal faces,” “reconciles two iconographic ages,” and “assures the passage from awe to charm.” By now, we all know that implacable face of the grand inquisitor and are moved from charm to terror. Do they teach that as part of a finishing-school curriculum at the Columbia School of Journalism?
The Morning Show’s Christine Hunter got the concession she wanted: The UBA executive promised, “From now on, you all will have a voice at every single board meeting.” That’s diversity/inclusion/equity (DIE) intimidation, the social-credit system, and fame — all rolled together. Bash, Davis, and Phillip are surrogates for Aniston and Witherspoon, who run the show.