transferred from Hujiang English "Newsroom" S01E01 Notes: Why America Is Not Great
【English Phrases】
1. And with a straight face you're gonna tell students that America is so star-spangledawesome that we're the only ones. And you actually have to tell your students that the US is already the only one in the world!
Plot: Will scoffs at those around him that the reason America is unique is freedom, and mocks that he already thinks America is awesome.
with a straight face:
2. We never beat our chest. We never talk big words.
Plot: Will delivers a tirade in college, first slamming the so-called American dominance theory, then saying that if we keep trying, America can be the greatest country in the world. Will said: "Let's not talk big, but do what we need to do.
beat our chest:
3. I was telling you not to let him off the hook. I was telling you not to let him off the hook.
Plot: Producer Don expresses his dissatisfaction with Will's previous interview, believing that he didn't ask enough tough questions.
off the hook:
4. You blew the interview and you took it out on me. You screwed up the interview yourself and pissed me off.
Plot: Will blames producer Don for failing that interview, and Don says this as he recalls the shame at the time.
take it out on: yes... vent
5. You're jumping a sinking ship
Plot: Will accuses Don of finding another job after he made a blistering remark.
jump a sinking ship:
6. Does he have an axe to grind? Did she have other plans.
Plot: One of the MacKenzie production team, Jim's classmates, give Jim a lot of inside information about the oil well eruption. Will doubts that, thinking the man has other plans. an axe to grind
: other plans, ulterior
motives
A summary of the previous quarrel between the two.
【Cultural Knowledge】
1. Fourth Estate:
"Reclaiming the Fourth Estate. Reclaiming journalism as an honorable profession."
MacKenzie mentioned the word in his quarrel with Will McAvoy: Fourth Power. "The fourth power" is a metaphor of the status of news media in society in Western society. The connotation it expresses is: news media constitutes a social force alongside legislation, administration, and judiciary. Three political powers act as checks and balances. Journalists are also known as "uncrowned kings" for their oversight of the effectiveness of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
2. Don Quixote Don Quixote:
"Here me now, Oh thou bleak and unbearable world. Thou art base and debauched as can be. But a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled now hurls down his gauntlet to thee"
also appears in MacKenzie's conversation with Will McAvoy. The meaning of this passage is: "The knight is ready to go, put on his gloves, and declare war on you!" And Don Quixote is mentioned again in the dialogue between the boss Charlie and Will at the end of the episode. Although the image of Don Quixote has a negative image of unrealistic and fantasy in the eyes of most people, what I want to show here is Don Quixote's unstoppable footsteps and continuous progress. Will always talks about his ratings and popularity after he has made achievements, so he stagnates and has no motivation and direction to move forward. That passage from MacKenzie was just a reminder to Will that he should keep moving forward and do the best journalism.
"Newsroom" S01E02 Notes: News Night 2.0 Era
[English Phrases]
1. I don't want him getting cold feet. I don't want him to run away.
Plot: While boss Charlie talks to Reese, Charlie forbids Reese from talking to Will about ratings. Because he wanted Will to focus on the news and forget about everything else, worried that mentioning ratings would make Will hold back.
get cold feet:
2.If you're up to it, sure. If you can do it, of course.
Plot: MacKenzie finds sexy female anchor Sloan for a show that teaches viewers about economics. Sloan: You want me to pole dance all the time and teach economics all the time? Mac's answer: If you can do it, of course you can.
up to it:
3. Jan Brewer just bailed on us for tonight. Jan Brewer put our pigeons on tonight.
Plot: Maggie messes up with an interview, causing her scheduled interviewee to drop it.
bail on: deserted, abandoned
4.He'd throw himself in front of a train for anyone of you here. He will go through fire and water for any of you.
Plot: Mac wants to restore Will's image in order to convince people of what Will said when he was a good guy.
throw oneself in front of a train:
There is a similar saying in jumping in front of a train
5. Let's kick it off with you. Let's start with you.
Plot: "Evening News" focuses on Arizona's immigration bill, and that's what Will said in a multi-person interview on the show.
kick off: Start doing
6. And I think you're rooting for Will to lose. I think you've always wanted Will to lose.
Plot: Maggie is fed up with Don keeping poaching her to work on the 10pm nightly news and thinks Don keeps hoping Will will fail.
root for: support, encourage
[cultural knowledge]
The SB1070 Act (full name: Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) is the most stringent immigration act in the United States in recent years. The new American immigration law has not only caused strong protests and anger from the Mexican ethnic group, but has also affected the lives and businesses of local Chinese and overseas Chinese. . Local Chinese businesspeople worry that the situation may be worse when the new law takes effect at the end of July.
Arizona Governor Jane Breville signed SB1070 on April 23, 2010, which allows local ** as long as the person suspected of being an illegal American immigrant can be interrogated or even arrested even if there is no warrant; Failure to produce valid documents to prove their legal status will be considered a crime.
The new bill, known as SB1070, was originally scheduled to take effect in Arizona on July 28, 2010. However, once the bill was passed, it immediately caused widespread controversy. Some immigration law experts believe that it violates the U.S. Constitution. On July 6, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Arizona in the U.S. District Court of Arizona on the grounds that federal law takes precedence over state law.
"Newsroom" S01E03 Notes: The Rise of the Tea Party and Congressional Elections
[English Phrases]
1. And that's how we're going to rein in government spending. This will be our measure to control government spending.
Plot: Will's interview on the New Night News, this is what the interviewee said.
rein in: Strict Control
2. You want to hear something that will blow your mind? Do you want to hear something better?
Plot: Will's new girlfriend is curious about the state of the newsroom, and at the Mac next to her says, "Would you like to hear something better?" (It's ironic that Will found a girlfriend like this)
blow your mind: ecstatic, surprising
3. This right here is always the swan song of the obsolete when you stare the futureparadigm in the face. The stubbornness you show now is the swan song of the obsolete.
Plot: Neal resents Jim's indifference to WikiLeaks, etc., and thinks Jim is stubborn, even stale, about old things.
swan song: Absolute pen, swan song
4.There are better ways to get back at me. There are better ways to get back at me.
Plot: Will finds a college girlfriend who is also a cheerleader. Mac expresses dissatisfaction with this, thinking that Will is revenge on him, but this kind of revenge is very small.
Get back at: slang ,
revenge
former work partner.
embedded with:
The original meaning of the unforgettable embed is to embed or plant, which is explained here as deep retention (in memory)
6.But his going tone it down or I'm going to fire him. Unless he can restrain a little, I will fire him .
Plot: Jane Fonda's company chairman Leona is very unhappy with the change in News Night, because Will's news is too sharp, causing her business to suffer, so she hopes Charlie can make Will change, otherwise he will fire Will .
tone down: ease
[cultural background]
1. In the third episode, the screenwriter involved a lot of American politics and history, so that when watching the show, because of ignorance of politics, I was confused. Let's talk about the political parties in the United States
: the Tea Party mentioned many times in the series: The
Tea Party is a political party in the United States and is synonymous with **. The main players are right-wing advocates of conservative economic policies. The Tea Party movement grew out of protests from the anti-tax movement and grew with protests over the increase in the U.S. national debt as a result of the 2009 stimulus recovery plan.
The history of the American Tea Party originated in 1773, when the people of Boston in the northeastern United States, which was still a British colony at that time, launched the Boston Tea Party in order to resist the high tax policy of the British colonial authorities. The 342 boxes of tea on the boat were dumped in the Boston Bay. This was the beginning of the North American people's opposition to British tyranny. The participants were then called the Tea Party.
The rebirth of the Tea Party began in February 2009. At that time, the NBC television host Santley expressed his opposition to the Obama administration's housing relief loan policy and called for the reappearance of the Tea Party. As a result, someone soon began to plan and set up a tea party. This is the New Tea Party. More than 600 representatives of the Rebirth Tea Party gathered from all over the United States to Tennessee to hold the first national convention of the Tea Party Rebirth. The Tea Party has become a platform for conservative populists to vent their dissatisfaction. In March 2009, due to the exposure of high rewards for high-level employees of AIG (American International Group), the participation of the Tea Party movement increased sharply, and in 2009 the Tea Party The protest assembly reached its first climax. Protesters used a variety of online means including Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and personal blogs to connect with each other to plan the tax day protests.
Although the current "Tea Party" movement is a thorough "grassroots" class protest, there are some deep-seated reasons why it has attracted the attention of the media. It is shapeless, decentralized rebellion, with no clear leadership and no central structure. He is a loose civil society, and from what Will said to Charlie in the play, it can be seen that although the Tea Party is still the Tea Party, his essence is far from that.
"The Tea Party is being radicalized, and their original organizing principal obliterated." with Democrats. Now is the time of the new general election in the United States, and another "donkey-elephant battle" has begun. What are the characteristics of the two parties and the policies they support?
Republican Party: The Republican Party
is also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party). In modern politics, the Republican Party is seen as the party of social conservatism and economic classical liberalism.
The Republican Party is made up of many different informal factions that often overlap but do not necessarily agree with each other. For example, within the Republican Party there are fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, social conservatives, and so on.
The Republican Party leans conservatively on social issues, borders on libertarianism on the economy, and has strong ties to Wall Street (big business) and High Street (smaller businesses in the area), but has little support from union groups. Republicans support lower taxes, limit the size of government on economic issues, and support business. Also because of factors such as low taxes and restrictions on the size of the government, the Republican Party is often welcomed by the middle and senior classes.
The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. Red is also often used to represent Republicans when reporters report. (So in the show, Charlie says: Call it red, which means Republican wins.)
Since its founding in 1856, the Republican Party has won 23 of 39 presidential elections, including 6 of the last 10; 18 of the 29 U.S. presidents since then have been Republicans. Including Bush Sr and Bush Jr., Reagan, Nixon, Coolidge and more.
Democratic Party: The Democratic Party
was formerly the Democratic-Republican Party established by Thomas Jefferson in 1792. At the beginning of the 19th century, the party split. One faction called itself the National Republican Party, which was later renamed the Whig Party; the other faction, led by Andrew Jackson, established the Democratic Party in 1828 and officially named it in 1840, becoming the oldest political party in the United States. .
In recent decades, the Democratic Party has tended to pursue centrist economic policies and reformative social policies, and believes that the government should play a role in issues such as poverty reduction and social assistance. Democrats oppose blindly cutting taxes and favor reforming the tax structure to provide more public services. The two major policies that the party focuses on are: to ensure that citizens have affordable and high-quality medical services, as well as low-cost and high-quality educational opportunities; to oppose unilateralism in foreign policy, and believe that the United States should attach importance to alliance relations and international support.
The Democratic Party's past supporters are mostly farmers, workers and minorities. Now, that structure has changed dramatically, and its supporters also include many highly educated and wealthy liberals. In addition, in recent years, among African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Jews and Arabs, the percentage of support for the Democratic Party has gradually increased.
The Democratic Party's emblem is the "donkey" and its iconic color is blue. The donkey became a symbol of the Democratic Party, not what the Democrats intended. When Democrat Andrew Jackson ran for president of the United States in 1828, his populist views were mocked by his opponents as a "jackass." Jackson generously printed the image of the donkey on campaign posters, turning passive into active. During Jackson's presidency, some cartoonists used donkeys to satirize him for being stubborn on some issues. The first political cartoon using a donkey to represent the Democratic Party was born in 1837.
Including the current U.S. president and the first president of black blood, Obama, there are 11 Democratic presidents. The more well-known presidents are: Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, Roosevelt and so on.
2. Concluding the conversation between Charlie and Leona, the owner of the company:
"You can't possibly expect us to tailor our news coverage to what best suits our corporate."
"News organizations are a public trust with an ability to inform and influence the national conversation."
These two passages are the essence of this episode The location is also a topic that the entire News Room will discuss: is it news or interests. Because of the fourth power of the news media, because of their pursuit of facts, they often lead to government suppression or opposition from supporters. Leona and Reese were outraged that the show lost the support of the Koch brothers over Will's repeated mention of Koch Industries (the world's second-largest private company) in the Tea Party coverage.
That nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. (It is more important to open people's wisdom than to make the audience a well-informed voter.) This is a sentence in Will's TV apology at the beginning of this episode . The way Will's team opens up people's wisdom is to question and make news with attitudes, so that people can clearly understand what those people who are chanting the banners of reform, tax cuts, etc. are really in the election. The whole episode uses a montage method to show the news they make through news clips. While such an approach would undoubtedly offend the government and its top sponsors, they are really doing journalism. Newsroom screenwriter Alan Sorkin uses this play's indomitable idealistic spirit to prompt the audience to reflect on the current state of news and face up to social problems.
At the end of the third episode, Leona said that Will will be fired, which will also become one of the focuses of the follow-up series: profit, or news, how Will, Mac and their team decide, let us look forward to the development of the follow-up plot.
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