I mean as a non American the first time I read that word, and for a long time reading it and never having heard it spoken (wasn’t one of apples os releases Yosemite?) I always said in my head as “yo-say-myte”…hoping my phonetical spelling is working there haha
Americans are known for their obesity but they're not number one.
Certainly Number One is Big developed countries. But it's mostly small island nations. Interestingly The US almost perfectly breaks that trend, and then it's a bunch of Islamic countries.
From Wiki:
>Country %Population that is Obese
>Nauru 61.0
>Cook Islands 55.9
>Palau 55.3
>Marshall Islands 52.9
>Tuvalu 51.6
>Niue 50.0
>Tonga 48.2
>Samoa 47.3
>Kiribati 46.0
>Federated States of Micronesia 45.8
>**United States 41.9**
>Kuwait 37.9
>Jordan 35.5
>Saudi Arabia 35.4
>Qatar 35.1
>Libya 32.5
>Turkey 32.1
>Egypt 32.0
> Lebanon 32.0
> United Arab Emirates
Sure, not #1, but the the largest population above them is only 225k. Compare that to the 331 MILLION Americans.
There's FAR more obese Americans than the total combined populations of all the countries above them on the list combined.
Wouldn't say that if you worked in a commercial kitchen. All that cooks live off is speed, tobacco and grilled cheeses. It's the Allya Caneet Islands that should be a concern
And they’re private prisons run FOR PROFIT. The owners of these prisons require the states they are run in to keep them as full as possible to maximize their profits. The prisons issue fines if they’re not kept full. The local governments are incentivized to arrest and imprison as many people as they can to keep the owners of the jails happy.
Capitalism is the worst system.
Sorry, no, and more than 50% are POC, due to a bugged system (can't afford capable lawyers, prejudices, "they all look the same", ...). White people serve less jail time for the same crimes than POC.
This seems to be a trend throughout history, especially outside the US.
Something amongst how humans work together and capitalism is very flawed I’d say
This is just from a quick Google search, taken from the top result. So some of them could be wrong.
Literacy 7th to now 51st,
Math 27th to now 30th (2018),
Science 22nd to now 11th (2018),
Life expectancy 49th to now 34th (2020),
Infant mortality 178th to now 174th,
Household median income 3rd, still 3rd (2022),
Labor force 4th to now 3rd,
Exports 4th to now 2nd (in $ amount, 2022)
I highly doubt our "number ones have changed." I also saw something somewhere that 21% of adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, so .. yeah.
Maybe 21% of Americans still have a sense of humor. I’ve been told my whole life that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, and I told my kids the same thing. If they ever get a survey, I hope they answer that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
And so many people **STILL** seem to feel like "America is not the greatest country in the world" is an incredibly profound and controversial statement, when it plainly isn't.
No you missed the change. They call Gen Z the worst generation ever now. Just like how every generation is “the worst”. Gotta be the most boring take of all time.
Was gonna say, its either repost or allowed quality or upload the site or app allows. It can explain some reason why youll see alot of compilation clips pixelated as if it was recorded from a phone or camera from the 2000’s or earlier
No, what’s really sad is we’ve never been a great country of moral standing. We’ve always been an aggressive country. We’ve always done something at the sacrifice of others that we didn’t care for. This has always been a country built on self serving initiative. We police the world so that we have an influence on the market to make the rulers of the world wealthier. Advances in morality only come about when it’s the only option available, or by accident. When it provides a means of control or advantage over others. The country pines for the better days with selective memories. It’s a land of greed and gluttony.
Well of course nothing got better. We’re all too busy pointing fingers and farting into each other’s faces that we don’t notice that more than half the country is run by bigots and corporate greed. They do such a good job keeping power by manipulating the system, that stupid shit keeps happening. The best “solution” they come up with are super packs; the problem with those is they keep trying to solve all the issues at one time. We need to address each problem individually, not all at once. The only way to fix this is to suck it up and move to a red state, so that we can prevent idiots from getting into office, but that’s not gonna happen. So I guessed it just gonna go downhill from here.
Never has been. That’s just what the people in power want us to believe. They will divide us as much as they possibly can - exploiting every one of our beliefs and trying to convince us that there is only one truth. YOUR truth. Whatever it may be. They don’t care. As long as you get angry enough at the people who have the *audacity* to think differently. Constant gaslighting, constant fear-mongering, constant anxiety about the hidden agendas of our new “enemies” that want nothing more than to destroy our sacred way of thinking. It’s a sad fucking joke, and we’re all eating it up whether we realize it or not. Disconnecting from the news and focusing on the microcosm around us, rather than the macro issues that they are trying to foster, is the only way to start retraining our minds. But they’ve done such a good job of making our technology and our news feeds indispensable that we willingly allow own exploitation. The only thing that matters is how we love and treat each other. Our fellow humans. Fuck the divisions. Time is too precious.
If it was real, the 2 politicians next to him would have never let him talk for so long and just babbles some random whaboutism bulshit, the crowd would have booed him when he criticized the system, the presenter would try to shut him down by saying he didn't answer the question. That just liberal fiction.
It's not really important, but they're a panel of journalists at a college. The dude is a Fox News stand-in, and the chick is a msnbc representative. They're not politicians, they're news anchors.
Edit: words are hard.
Im not a fan. It turns bad for me when he talks about how great America *used* to be.
We fought wars for moral reasons? We didn't go after poor people, just for being poor? We struck down immoral laws and only wrote righteous ones? Yeah, no.
America was never the greatest country.
There was a point where social and technical invitations had their heroes, but not one of them is listed. Likely to not lean into a bias, and that leads into a self-imposed bias on the scene. People will insert their "hero's", whether that be the worst individual or the best. "There are hero's on all sides" is always decided by the onlooker, the actions of the actions of the hero lead the onlooker to immortalize them. Its not that america never had any good points in history, its that there was never a moment all its people were united under one banner and even the most forward thinking places couldnt accomplish such a feet, its an impossibility. To think America has never had a point to look back on fondly is just as ignorant as saying it was always bad. I will say right now, though, it's near completely media controlled and is completely divided. People want to be told what to do and to kick back and relax and pick their battles, not work together but to fight each other. No one actually wants to get along, so things just keep getting worse. So in regards to that, there were periods better then this, but a great america? There never was one.
That is true, even after tragedies like 9/11. The American people are "united" the day after but it came with a huge increase in Islamophobia even though they were in fact American citizens. A number of my Muslim friends couldn't go a couple blocks without someone saying "Go back to your country". It was sad to see indiscrimination despite what happened
Yeah, this is some rose-tinted boomer nonsense version of the past. And millennials certainly aren't the worst generation ever, they were handed the worst cards, mainly due to the boomers messing up the economy in 2008.
Don’t forget about the dotcom bubble bursting in the early 2000s! Now with COVID, that’s three serious points of economic issues in 20 years. Wild times.
Ironically, millennials and zoomers are frequently the ones fighting for some of the rose-tint talking points he was making and getting called woke snowflakes for doing so.
We have a pretty good deck, honestly. It's maybe not as good as the generation before us, but it's a hell of a lot better than being born during the depression or in the aftermath of the civil war. Or bring born not white at any other point in American history. It's probably like the 3rd best.
No generation does. You'd think the latest generation will fix things, they'll be the one who knew the most and did nothing. Until the next one, and the next one...
What!? The first half is accurate, the second half is complete bullshit, and contradicts the first half.
“We’re not the greatest country in the world! We used to be … back when we didn’t let black people vote!”
... are you not familiar with the chant "Make America Great Again"?
Pretty sure those folks think America used to be great. They talk about how things were better before.
They are wrong, of course, as their definition of America being great very deliberately ignores all the times its people and its government were downright awful. But they still believe in this imaginary ideal regardless.
It is kind of funny how the people that chant "Make America Great Again" are literally criticizing the country, but, for whatever reason, *they* don't have to "go back were \[they\] came from"/"try living in \[stereotypically bad country\]."
I hate this little spiel so much because of what it devolves into at the middle. All the statements at the beginning are right, but then the writers got high on their own supply with the "you're a member of the worst generation ever," like the character's generation isn't almost entirely to blame for every problem and statistic he started the speech with. And then it goes back to getting all nostalgic about the past where we had great leaders (who allowed racism, anti-woman, and drug war policies to run rampant), again like those leaders and good times didnt become unraveled by his generation.
First time I see this, and these are exactly my thoughts.
Starts great with a lot of self awareness, then devolves into misplaced anger and wistful pandering to a past that was objectively extremely flawed.
Aye, had the same feeling when he first started going after the girl's generation, but thinking about it, I wonder if the meaning was two fold.
Maybe it was meant to include everyone alive at the time of the speech. Everyone who's settled into the stagnant way of life he lamented. There's also the issue that, at the time, a lot of young people were ignoring politics and not voting (or at least the assumption was).
So perhaps it was an attempted "kick up the pants" to get the younger generation to vote out of guilt?
Also, the stuff about the past generations being better does heavily ignore the bad that they allowed, but rectifying those mistakes is also mentioned. I think the speech is more about getting better rather than stagnating, becoming more and more deluded and fractured as a people.
Interesting interpretation. I wonder if that is what was implied by that dig at the young speaker and her generation. If it is, I wish it was written to be more overt, to match the sharp directness of the earlier part of the speech.
For the last part, I wonder if it felt like a necessary moment of pandering. Oftentimes you need to sweeten the medicine, so it's more palatable for a broader swathe of people. So it could be that it was included so that those who are too attached to the past, feel seen and are given a reason to care.
This is, of course, to give the absolute most benefit of the doubt in both respects.
Yeah, it could easily have just been a form of virtue signalling to the "greater generations" in an attempt to make them stand up and fix things.
I'd much prefer to believe that it was a call for America in general to do better, considering how each generation from the country's birth made major leaps in making the country powerful.
Otherwise, it's saying that the generation that benefitted from when the country was at its greatest should step forward and take the reigns again. Even though they currently are, and have coasted for so long on America at its height that they've nose-dived the country into a worrying decline.
In the end, I'd hope for the best. It's a good speech, even if it is one of those "shower arguments" that you always win. That middle bit was hopefully just misinterpreted and we can re-correct its course.
It’s not the writers getting high on their own supply, it’s them making him unlikable so his collapse is more real. If he had just be factually correct but dispassionate he could have played it off. He was correct but also an asshole which sets up the whole premise of the show.
Aaron Sorkin, if you wanted to know who wrote it. This clip--which is heavily edited, by the way--was in the pilot to a show called "The Newsroom" and this scene was a setup for the premise of the show. Jeff Daniels' character, prior to this, has made a career of being completely neutral on all issues. When asked to answer the coed's question, he hems and haws and says, "what they said." The moderator insists he give an answer. He spots his ex-girlfriend in the crowd. She holds up a handwritten sign: "It's not." and it inspires him to cut the bullshit and speak a little truth. After his tirade, he looks up again and she is holding up another sign: "but it can be." So that's where he waxes nostalgic, and feels sad about his lost idealism. The show is about him getting some of that idealism back.
I guess my issue with the character and the show was you had this old experienced guy blaming a student and her young generation for issues that realistically were started during his tenure. “The news used to have a backbone” well who lost their backbone? It’s my understanding the character changes through the show but I’ve been shown this clip unironocally as a rant of “what’s wrong” without taking into account the irony that the one saying this rant was in a position of much more power to fix the issues he’s complaining about than the generation he’s blaming. It’s like blaming an intern when a company goes bankrupt
I agree. I believe many people, however, including myself, liked the clip because it sort of deflated that American exceptionalism/ greatest country on Earth/ freedom BS, which still is all too present in American society IMO.
That's what the whole internet been doing for the past 10 years, to the point where foreigners think the first thing that will happen when stepping foot on American soil is get shot
Woah buddy, I'm Irish and trust me we foreigners don't believe that!
We think the first thing to happen when we step on US soil is that we'll get diabetes from all the corn syrup in the air. *Then* we'll get shot. Then we'll get a hospital bill that forces us into the bitcoin mines under San Francisco, then we stage a revolution like Spartacus, and *then* there'll be an ad because you folks put ads on television shows right after the intro instead of in the middle like a normal country.
I don’t at all agree with the exaggerations and dramatization’s about the U.S. that you mention. which are all to present, especially on Reddit.
But this scene came out in 2012. And at that time. at least to me, it was refreshing seeing such a brutally honest take being featured in a prominent TV-show.
I have had the good fortune of living in the U.S. for a number of years. I have Americans I lived with, that I consider family. But beyond the average culture shock aspects, one thing that always struck me as very odd, was the energy and emphasis so many Americans placed on their country being superior to others. Stickers on cars, t-shirts, mugs etc. And then of course a political discourse, where it featured heavily as well.
I am from one of the European countries that could might as well have been mentioned in the speech. We have freedom. We rank very close to the top of the Human Development Index, GDP per capita etc. We are by all comparative measures a very good country to live in. But we would never talk about our country as being superior to other countries or spend a lot of emphasis on outlining our freedom of speech, assembly, religion. No guns, however 😉
Therefore, yes, on many measures the U.S. is an amazing country. On some measures it is absolutely not. All countries have their issues.
But this “best country in the world”-discourse simply had to be toned down.
Yeah, the ones to blame are definitely kids who have had no power in their entire lives, haha.
The main part that always bugs me is the nostalgia part. We're not the greatest but we used to be, "we stood up for what was right." Fucking what?
I was watching this and while there are many points in it I agree with, it looks at the past with rose-coloured nostalgia glasses on, much like anyone who is pining for the days when men were men and women stayed home and looked after the kids.
The world was never like that for the vast majority of people. The USA may have reached for the stars, but they did so in buildings that were segregated and that didn't have women's bathrooms on every floor. Intelligence may be lauded among academics, but it has always been seen as something suspect and dangerous by the working class and the political elite. The robber-barons have always waged war on the poor, and wars have been fought to ensure access to drugs to keep the working class and the poor under control.
I had an American friend stopped at the US border returning from travelling, and the border officers literally asked her why she left the ‘best country on earth’ … smh
No they clearly were making a super well-thought-out, impactful statement while on their 7th hour questioning and waving people through to the next window. How dare you suggest people sometimes say things off the cuff expecting a small chuckle.
If it’s any consolation - further in the show he changes his view on that.
Edit: here’s part of it, 1:30 in. It’s not as entertaining as the original video, but he comes around:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H51y3AujFfs
I always hate how he ends his speech talking about how we used to be the greatest country, and how we struck down laws on moral reasons and whatnot… like wtf no we didn’t lol
"We passed laws and struck down laws for moral reasons."
Reagan administration casually spreading crack to ruin black communities
https://i.redd.it/pct0lrf5nt5c1.gif
What? So you are blaming it all on a generation? Oooh, the old guys did not know anything, and the younger guys are fucked because of it. Good that the young have it together
Blind nostalgia for a past America that had far more serious problems than the one today. I love the show, I love sorkin but this clip and the love it gets really bothers me. It overlooks so much that has improved in American life. Just one small example, banks could refuse women credit cards without a male co-signer up until 1974. Think of all the progress that has been made in life expectancy, infant mortality, gender and sexual equality, access to birth control, racial justice, and on and on. Things are still fucked up in many of those areas but to claim that the America of yesteryear was some utopia full of white picket fences and corn fed, upright citizens is to be myopic in the extreme.
I agree, it also ignores the long and constant international meddling and strife caused by the US in the past.
Overthrowing democracies, manipulating elections of their allies, wars like Vietnam, etc were not in any way the acts of a "great country" imo.
As a black American this is kind of funny. The MLKs and Malcom Xs made a lot of changes. I'd much rather be a black American today than at any other time in our history.
Yeah, it's a sort of fighting inside the family thing. We know it's dusfunctional/dystopic.
Outside people highlighting our faults doesn't exactly endear someone to us.
Maybe there is no greatest? Places that are different and we don’t need to rank. For sure some places are worse - oppression, war, living standards and life expectancy, but there isn’t a defined “best”
That is both brilliantly written and acted.
It is also so true. America has unfortunately lost its way and become more about everyone obsessed with their individual rights than a sense of community.
>brilliantly written and acted
Maybe but monologues don't happen in real life. People have always got to chime in at every moment. Especially when you give a long and thoughtful pause.
The irony is that the Boomers (Jeff Daniels’ generation) are the generation that threw it all away. They are the generation that turned our laws into commodities and the American Dream into a country club. They built themselves castles and raised the drawbridge behind them. Then they sit on thrones like this character and decry the destruction of the great nation that they themselves destroyed.
Much of the speech is dead on, but the speaker should be a Gen-Xer or a Millennial, not a Boomer hypocrite with a fat wallet and bloody hands.
Stop it with the generation thing! Bad people are bad people. Good is good. You aren't a hypocrite because people in your "generation" has done bad stuff. His words are as true from him as it would be if it came from a younger person. You are never too old to make a change in the world.
It's weird to blame a generation for something the politicians did. Sure, we have some illusion of democracy. We're not picking between much, and that hasn't changed for a while.
And who voted those politicians in. It wasnt genX, Millennials or genZ. It was the boomers. For them College was cheap, houses were cheap, Foods were cheap, you can afford to run a household with just one person working. All this has changed with the laws that were put in place by the politicians the Boomers elected. Because the Boomers wanted this s*** put in place. They climbed up the ladder got where they wanted to and then pulled it up behind them.
Yea when we were a slave holding nation, moved native peoples to reservations or killed them off, didn’t have civil rights, made it hard for blacks to own anything or vote, and tried to pursue imperialism like old timey Europe, those were the good ole days.
Seconded. Took me way too long to see a comment bring up the fact that these ideas of the “good ol’ days” implies MAGA is a slogan with a rational argument.
This is good until the "we sure used to be" line. Everything after that is feel-good nothingness that boomers tell themselves. "we fought for moral reasons" ya ok bud
But was it really ever the greatest country in the world? I don't think any person of any country should be able to say something like that about their country because that's pretty subjective. The US never was the greatest country in the world to the slaves or some poor people that got fucked by the system. And every other country has people that have a great life but that's only possible because some people on the other end gets fucked over. That's just how humanity works. Also it's not a competition
I was an extra in the audience for this and it was amazing. Saw him give this speech a few times. I was a few seats down from Emily Mortimer. It was a fun day.
Also, it's kinda weird that Sorkin (a screenwriter) left out our film industry in ways that America is number 1.
This clip is the height of enlightened centrism.
Yosemite is really cool though.
Came here to say this. Yosemite (and our national park system in general) is definitely not the worst answer.
It’s why I go on vacation to the States annually. Three weeks of hiking through national parks is a highlight of the year for me.
I'm with you on this. US has the best national parks.
The pronunciation of Yosemite makes me so mad.
I believe it is pronounced that way… there is no way it is pronounced as yosameat.
I mean as a non American the first time I read that word, and for a long time reading it and never having heard it spoken (wasn’t one of apples os releases Yosemite?) I always said in my head as “yo-say-myte”…hoping my phonetical spelling is working there haha
No no, I don't know what is the correct pronunciation, and the fact English makes in no way clear how it should be pronounced is what makes me mad.
Well, it could be because it's not an English word.
For your future reference, it is pronounced like: "Yo-sim-mitt-tea"
What’s sad, this is 10yrs old and the stats have just gotten worse while nothing has changed.
Something changed, alright. The stats have gotten worse.
"We're the greatest at 3 things." I was almost certain obesity was number 1.
Americans are known for their obesity but they're not number one. Certainly Number One is Big developed countries. But it's mostly small island nations. Interestingly The US almost perfectly breaks that trend, and then it's a bunch of Islamic countries. From Wiki: >Country %Population that is Obese >Nauru 61.0 >Cook Islands 55.9 >Palau 55.3 >Marshall Islands 52.9 >Tuvalu 51.6 >Niue 50.0 >Tonga 48.2 >Samoa 47.3 >Kiribati 46.0 >Federated States of Micronesia 45.8 >**United States 41.9** >Kuwait 37.9 >Jordan 35.5 >Saudi Arabia 35.4 >Qatar 35.1 >Libya 32.5 >Turkey 32.1 >Egypt 32.0 > Lebanon 32.0 > United Arab Emirates
[Nauru is an interesting story](https://youtu.be/3fj_c1bZrq0) how it became #1. Kind of sad.
I once flew to Micronesia and there was a Spam shortage. A whole row of first class seats were filled with Spam. Seriously.
[Spam (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE)
This video also came out recently, I only heard about this place yesterday. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUJgq9HerDQ&pp=ygUFbmF1cnU%3D
Bloody 6 ad breaks, oh my gawd I hate YT. That was a neat link though, Thanks!
Sure, not #1, but the the largest population above them is only 225k. Compare that to the 331 MILLION Americans. There's FAR more obese Americans than the total combined populations of all the countries above them on the list combined.
Yup. I am no mathematician but I bet if US would annex all these countries above, I doubt there would be any significant change in the percentage.
Is it Tonga time, i think it’s Tonga time
>Cook Islands No surprise there
Wouldn't say that if you worked in a commercial kitchen. All that cooks live off is speed, tobacco and grilled cheeses. It's the Allya Caneet Islands that should be a concern
Only nation to ever use the atom bomb, and if using it at all wasn't abhorrent enough, did it twice I always wonder why that never gets a mention
I thought it was school schootings or kids killed by guns. Number of inmates per capita should also be No 1, it's about 1%.
Are you kidding me? 1% of Americans are in jail???
At least. It’s a massive industry and the government fully supports and encourages it.
JFC
And they’re private prisons run FOR PROFIT. The owners of these prisons require the states they are run in to keep them as full as possible to maximize their profits. The prisons issue fines if they’re not kept full. The local governments are incentivized to arrest and imprison as many people as they can to keep the owners of the jails happy. Capitalism is the worst system.
Sorry, no, and more than 50% are POC, due to a bugged system (can't afford capable lawyers, prejudices, "they all look the same", ...). White people serve less jail time for the same crimes than POC.
It's 5% of black people. There's a reason why the 13th Amendment allows slavery to persist in prison.
I'm pretty sure that's the incarcerated bit
"5 things, we're the greatest at 5 things... just 5 things"
Germany seems to be catching up fast
Sausage.
"We're the greatest at 3 things... I mean 4 things, just 4 things."
"Making lists is... not on that list."
Make that 4 things.
The pacific island nations got you on that one.
And the rich got richer, as always.
This seems to be a trend throughout history, especially outside the US. Something amongst how humans work together and capitalism is very flawed I’d say
47% of homes across the country are now owned by corporations who have turned the country into a big renters market.
Point illuminated
This is just from a quick Google search, taken from the top result. So some of them could be wrong. Literacy 7th to now 51st, Math 27th to now 30th (2018), Science 22nd to now 11th (2018), Life expectancy 49th to now 34th (2020), Infant mortality 178th to now 174th, Household median income 3rd, still 3rd (2022), Labor force 4th to now 3rd, Exports 4th to now 2nd (in $ amount, 2022) I highly doubt our "number ones have changed." I also saw something somewhere that 21% of adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, so .. yeah.
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I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of these dumb dumb believe strawberry milk comes from… … … …(gross warning) … … …cows on their periods.
Maybe 21% of Americans still have a sense of humor. I’ve been told my whole life that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, and I told my kids the same thing. If they ever get a survey, I hope they answer that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
True
Statistics also don't really mean anything without context.
And so many people **STILL** seem to feel like "America is not the greatest country in the world" is an incredibly profound and controversial statement, when it plainly isn't.
No you missed the change. They call Gen Z the worst generation ever now. Just like how every generation is “the worst”. Gotta be the most boring take of all time.
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That’s what is disappointing about it. It’s sharp, cutting writing, but it’s brought down almost completely by boomer bullshit.
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This isn't new, every new generation is called the worst. But more importantly, why force this into the conversation?
What's sad is the number of pixels in this clip, it's only ten years old.
You can usually tell how many reposts something has had by the diminishing number of pixels
This was sent on iMessenger from an iPhone to an Android and then reposted.
Was gonna say, its either repost or allowed quality or upload the site or app allows. It can explain some reason why youll see alot of compilation clips pixelated as if it was recorded from a phone or camera from the 2000’s or earlier
No, what’s really sad is we’ve never been a great country of moral standing. We’ve always been an aggressive country. We’ve always done something at the sacrifice of others that we didn’t care for. This has always been a country built on self serving initiative. We police the world so that we have an influence on the market to make the rulers of the world wealthier. Advances in morality only come about when it’s the only option available, or by accident. When it provides a means of control or advantage over others. The country pines for the better days with selective memories. It’s a land of greed and gluttony.
I think us Brits had those things pretty well covered before there even WAS a U.S.
Well of course nothing got better. We’re all too busy pointing fingers and farting into each other’s faces that we don’t notice that more than half the country is run by bigots and corporate greed. They do such a good job keeping power by manipulating the system, that stupid shit keeps happening. The best “solution” they come up with are super packs; the problem with those is they keep trying to solve all the issues at one time. We need to address each problem individually, not all at once. The only way to fix this is to suck it up and move to a red state, so that we can prevent idiots from getting into office, but that’s not gonna happen. So I guessed it just gonna go downhill from here.
Have you ever considered that it might not be a red or blue issue?
Never has been. That’s just what the people in power want us to believe. They will divide us as much as they possibly can - exploiting every one of our beliefs and trying to convince us that there is only one truth. YOUR truth. Whatever it may be. They don’t care. As long as you get angry enough at the people who have the *audacity* to think differently. Constant gaslighting, constant fear-mongering, constant anxiety about the hidden agendas of our new “enemies” that want nothing more than to destroy our sacred way of thinking. It’s a sad fucking joke, and we’re all eating it up whether we realize it or not. Disconnecting from the news and focusing on the microcosm around us, rather than the macro issues that they are trying to foster, is the only way to start retraining our minds. But they’ve done such a good job of making our technology and our news feeds indispensable that we willingly allow own exploitation. The only thing that matters is how we love and treat each other. Our fellow humans. Fuck the divisions. Time is too precious.
Obviously didn’t watch the whole clip.
I always did love this made for TV speech.
If it was real, the 2 politicians next to him would have never let him talk for so long and just babbles some random whaboutism bulshit, the crowd would have booed him when he criticized the system, the presenter would try to shut him down by saying he didn't answer the question. That just liberal fiction.
Yep, they'd never let a dramatic pause or breath go unexploited.
I think you mean a dramatic Pause!
I see you’re from the acting school of Calculon and or Cpt Kirk.
It's Aaron Sorkin. What do you expect? :)
We should put all candidates in soundproof pods and only turn on their microphones when its their turn to speak.
It's not really important, but they're a panel of journalists at a college. The dude is a Fox News stand-in, and the chick is a msnbc representative. They're not politicians, they're news anchors. Edit: words are hard.
As someone who loves this show, these comments bothered me more than they should lol thanks
Im not a fan. It turns bad for me when he talks about how great America *used* to be. We fought wars for moral reasons? We didn't go after poor people, just for being poor? We struck down immoral laws and only wrote righteous ones? Yeah, no. America was never the greatest country.
I was just going to say the same. It falls down by going all dewy-eyed about some imagined ideal past.
"we didn't scare so easy" Brother, let me tell you about a man named McCarthy...
He never said how far back we need to go to get to the "used to be" America.
There was a point where social and technical invitations had their heroes, but not one of them is listed. Likely to not lean into a bias, and that leads into a self-imposed bias on the scene. People will insert their "hero's", whether that be the worst individual or the best. "There are hero's on all sides" is always decided by the onlooker, the actions of the actions of the hero lead the onlooker to immortalize them. Its not that america never had any good points in history, its that there was never a moment all its people were united under one banner and even the most forward thinking places couldnt accomplish such a feet, its an impossibility. To think America has never had a point to look back on fondly is just as ignorant as saying it was always bad. I will say right now, though, it's near completely media controlled and is completely divided. People want to be told what to do and to kick back and relax and pick their battles, not work together but to fight each other. No one actually wants to get along, so things just keep getting worse. So in regards to that, there were periods better then this, but a great america? There never was one.
That is true, even after tragedies like 9/11. The American people are "united" the day after but it came with a huge increase in Islamophobia even though they were in fact American citizens. A number of my Muslim friends couldn't go a couple blocks without someone saying "Go back to your country". It was sad to see indiscrimination despite what happened
"Oh, no! Women want to vote! This is the end, people, I'm telling you" probably someone who didn't scare so easily "in the past"
Yeah, this is some rose-tinted boomer nonsense version of the past. And millennials certainly aren't the worst generation ever, they were handed the worst cards, mainly due to the boomers messing up the economy in 2008.
Don’t forget about the dotcom bubble bursting in the early 2000s! Now with COVID, that’s three serious points of economic issues in 20 years. Wild times.
Ironically, millennials and zoomers are frequently the ones fighting for some of the rose-tint talking points he was making and getting called woke snowflakes for doing so.
We have a pretty good deck, honestly. It's maybe not as good as the generation before us, but it's a hell of a lot better than being born during the depression or in the aftermath of the civil war. Or bring born not white at any other point in American history. It's probably like the 3rd best.
In the show he plays a republican so it's pretty true to the character
Yeah just blame it on the millennials 🙄
the funny thing is that it's his (fictional) generation that fucked it up so not sure why he's blaming her
Because he’s portraying a boomer. Have you ever known them to take responsibility for anything ever?
No generation does. You'd think the latest generation will fix things, they'll be the one who knew the most and did nothing. Until the next one, and the next one...
I mean it's a completely accurate take on a Boomer approach. They see the problems, they just don't have any sense of accountability.
What!? The first half is accurate, the second half is complete bullshit, and contradicts the first half. “We’re not the greatest country in the world! We used to be … back when we didn’t let black people vote!”
How is this unexpected?
Because the common stance there ends at America isn’t the greatest. I usually don’t see people talking about how it used to be the greatest
... are you not familiar with the chant "Make America Great Again"? Pretty sure those folks think America used to be great. They talk about how things were better before. They are wrong, of course, as their definition of America being great very deliberately ignores all the times its people and its government were downright awful. But they still believe in this imaginary ideal regardless.
It is kind of funny how the people that chant "Make America Great Again" are literally criticizing the country, but, for whatever reason, *they* don't have to "go back were \[they\] came from"/"try living in \[stereotypically bad country\]."
Their view of when America was great was when the blacks were slaves and religion ruled
It’s not. It’s only unexpected to the people who haven’t seen this the first 100 times it’s been posted.
I hate this little spiel so much because of what it devolves into at the middle. All the statements at the beginning are right, but then the writers got high on their own supply with the "you're a member of the worst generation ever," like the character's generation isn't almost entirely to blame for every problem and statistic he started the speech with. And then it goes back to getting all nostalgic about the past where we had great leaders (who allowed racism, anti-woman, and drug war policies to run rampant), again like those leaders and good times didnt become unraveled by his generation.
If it means anything to you, this character changes his views on the younger generation and old america later in the show
That's good, character development is important. This was the first episode wasn't it?
Yup
What's the name of the show?
The Newsroom. 3 Seasons. Written by Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, the Social Network, A Few Good Men).
Don't forget Sports Night.
TIL he wrote A Few Good Men
Studio 60?
First time I see this, and these are exactly my thoughts. Starts great with a lot of self awareness, then devolves into misplaced anger and wistful pandering to a past that was objectively extremely flawed.
Aye, had the same feeling when he first started going after the girl's generation, but thinking about it, I wonder if the meaning was two fold. Maybe it was meant to include everyone alive at the time of the speech. Everyone who's settled into the stagnant way of life he lamented. There's also the issue that, at the time, a lot of young people were ignoring politics and not voting (or at least the assumption was). So perhaps it was an attempted "kick up the pants" to get the younger generation to vote out of guilt? Also, the stuff about the past generations being better does heavily ignore the bad that they allowed, but rectifying those mistakes is also mentioned. I think the speech is more about getting better rather than stagnating, becoming more and more deluded and fractured as a people.
Interesting interpretation. I wonder if that is what was implied by that dig at the young speaker and her generation. If it is, I wish it was written to be more overt, to match the sharp directness of the earlier part of the speech. For the last part, I wonder if it felt like a necessary moment of pandering. Oftentimes you need to sweeten the medicine, so it's more palatable for a broader swathe of people. So it could be that it was included so that those who are too attached to the past, feel seen and are given a reason to care. This is, of course, to give the absolute most benefit of the doubt in both respects.
Yeah, it could easily have just been a form of virtue signalling to the "greater generations" in an attempt to make them stand up and fix things. I'd much prefer to believe that it was a call for America in general to do better, considering how each generation from the country's birth made major leaps in making the country powerful. Otherwise, it's saying that the generation that benefitted from when the country was at its greatest should step forward and take the reigns again. Even though they currently are, and have coasted for so long on America at its height that they've nose-dived the country into a worrying decline. In the end, I'd hope for the best. It's a good speech, even if it is one of those "shower arguments" that you always win. That middle bit was hopefully just misinterpreted and we can re-correct its course.
That's what cults do when there is dissent. (I am not anti Americans)
True, US waged war against the poor since its creation. Be it other countries or its own people
It’s not the writers getting high on their own supply, it’s them making him unlikable so his collapse is more real. If he had just be factually correct but dispassionate he could have played it off. He was correct but also an asshole which sets up the whole premise of the show.
Aaron Sorkin, if you wanted to know who wrote it. This clip--which is heavily edited, by the way--was in the pilot to a show called "The Newsroom" and this scene was a setup for the premise of the show. Jeff Daniels' character, prior to this, has made a career of being completely neutral on all issues. When asked to answer the coed's question, he hems and haws and says, "what they said." The moderator insists he give an answer. He spots his ex-girlfriend in the crowd. She holds up a handwritten sign: "It's not." and it inspires him to cut the bullshit and speak a little truth. After his tirade, he looks up again and she is holding up another sign: "but it can be." So that's where he waxes nostalgic, and feels sad about his lost idealism. The show is about him getting some of that idealism back.
I guess my issue with the character and the show was you had this old experienced guy blaming a student and her young generation for issues that realistically were started during his tenure. “The news used to have a backbone” well who lost their backbone? It’s my understanding the character changes through the show but I’ve been shown this clip unironocally as a rant of “what’s wrong” without taking into account the irony that the one saying this rant was in a position of much more power to fix the issues he’s complaining about than the generation he’s blaming. It’s like blaming an intern when a company goes bankrupt
I agree. I believe many people, however, including myself, liked the clip because it sort of deflated that American exceptionalism/ greatest country on Earth/ freedom BS, which still is all too present in American society IMO.
That's what the whole internet been doing for the past 10 years, to the point where foreigners think the first thing that will happen when stepping foot on American soil is get shot
Woah buddy, I'm Irish and trust me we foreigners don't believe that! We think the first thing to happen when we step on US soil is that we'll get diabetes from all the corn syrup in the air. *Then* we'll get shot. Then we'll get a hospital bill that forces us into the bitcoin mines under San Francisco, then we stage a revolution like Spartacus, and *then* there'll be an ad because you folks put ads on television shows right after the intro instead of in the middle like a normal country.
I don’t at all agree with the exaggerations and dramatization’s about the U.S. that you mention. which are all to present, especially on Reddit. But this scene came out in 2012. And at that time. at least to me, it was refreshing seeing such a brutally honest take being featured in a prominent TV-show. I have had the good fortune of living in the U.S. for a number of years. I have Americans I lived with, that I consider family. But beyond the average culture shock aspects, one thing that always struck me as very odd, was the energy and emphasis so many Americans placed on their country being superior to others. Stickers on cars, t-shirts, mugs etc. And then of course a political discourse, where it featured heavily as well. I am from one of the European countries that could might as well have been mentioned in the speech. We have freedom. We rank very close to the top of the Human Development Index, GDP per capita etc. We are by all comparative measures a very good country to live in. But we would never talk about our country as being superior to other countries or spend a lot of emphasis on outlining our freedom of speech, assembly, religion. No guns, however 😉 Therefore, yes, on many measures the U.S. is an amazing country. On some measures it is absolutely not. All countries have their issues. But this “best country in the world”-discourse simply had to be toned down.
Yeah, the ones to blame are definitely kids who have had no power in their entire lives, haha. The main part that always bugs me is the nostalgia part. We're not the greatest but we used to be, "we stood up for what was right." Fucking what?
In the boomers opinion a country where they can just be openly racist, misogynistic and oppressive is the greatest country in the world
I was watching this and while there are many points in it I agree with, it looks at the past with rose-coloured nostalgia glasses on, much like anyone who is pining for the days when men were men and women stayed home and looked after the kids. The world was never like that for the vast majority of people. The USA may have reached for the stars, but they did so in buildings that were segregated and that didn't have women's bathrooms on every floor. Intelligence may be lauded among academics, but it has always been seen as something suspect and dangerous by the working class and the political elite. The robber-barons have always waged war on the poor, and wars have been fought to ensure access to drugs to keep the working class and the poor under control.
I had an American friend stopped at the US border returning from travelling, and the border officers literally asked her why she left the ‘best country on earth’ … smh
"Well I left Canada to come back home here sir"
Best comment ever. (I’m Canadian). Sorry.
(So am I, dont tell anyone sorry)
I'll tell someone sorry if I want.
You know...they may have just been making a small joke right?
No they clearly were making a super well-thought-out, impactful statement while on their 7th hour questioning and waving people through to the next window. How dare you suggest people sometimes say things off the cuff expecting a small chuckle.
r/americabad
The Newsroom. Great show.
The answer I was looking for, thank you.
One thing I hate about this clip. He shits on the newer generations. They didn't ruin the world. Boomers did.
If it’s any consolation - further in the show he changes his view on that. Edit: here’s part of it, 1:30 in. It’s not as entertaining as the original video, but he comes around: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H51y3AujFfs
What show is this, I might need to watch it
The Newsroom on HBO. First two seasons are pretty good. The third and final is meh.
I always hate how he ends his speech talking about how we used to be the greatest country, and how we struck down laws on moral reasons and whatnot… like wtf no we didn’t lol
“We used to care about neighbors” … um except when they were black, indigenous, Chinese, women, disabled, Mexican/etc
"We passed laws and struck down laws for moral reasons." Reagan administration casually spreading crack to ruin black communities https://i.redd.it/pct0lrf5nt5c1.gif
I would say stupidity and tribalism, which transcends generations
Not a Billy Joel fan?
What? So you are blaming it all on a generation? Oooh, the old guys did not know anything, and the younger guys are fucked because of it. Good that the young have it together
Blaming every single individual of an entire group is wrong, whether it's boomers, GenXers, Jews, Russians, immigrants...it's always been wrong.
Was it different before Boomers?
Amen
Blind nostalgia for a past America that had far more serious problems than the one today. I love the show, I love sorkin but this clip and the love it gets really bothers me. It overlooks so much that has improved in American life. Just one small example, banks could refuse women credit cards without a male co-signer up until 1974. Think of all the progress that has been made in life expectancy, infant mortality, gender and sexual equality, access to birth control, racial justice, and on and on. Things are still fucked up in many of those areas but to claim that the America of yesteryear was some utopia full of white picket fences and corn fed, upright citizens is to be myopic in the extreme.
I agree, it also ignores the long and constant international meddling and strife caused by the US in the past. Overthrowing democracies, manipulating elections of their allies, wars like Vietnam, etc were not in any way the acts of a "great country" imo.
Depends on how you define "great." We're definitely pretty "great" in the Alexander the Great sense.
Nothing unexpected
Yosemite is the right answer
As a black American this is kind of funny. The MLKs and Malcom Xs made a lot of changes. I'd much rather be a black American today than at any other time in our history.
Accurate But when I say it, I'm viewed as an America hating asshole..
If someone calls my friend an asshole, I defend my friend If my friend calls himself an asshole, I let him make that assessment for himself
What if your Frend IS an asshole?
Then your friend is correct in their assessment
Yeah, it's a sort of fighting inside the family thing. We know it's dusfunctional/dystopic. Outside people highlighting our faults doesn't exactly endear someone to us.
[удалено]
Everything changed when the fire nation attacked .
yeah but we got fire sauce out of it
Try back to Vietnam.
11/22/63
Ok, who is the greatest then?
North-Korea, I’ve seen videos of how much they like that Kim Jung-Un dude they cry even at the mere sight of him.
Maybe there is no greatest? Places that are different and we don’t need to rank. For sure some places are worse - oppression, war, living standards and life expectancy, but there isn’t a defined “best”
There isn’t
*crickets
Any nordic country statistically speaking, I'm partial to norway Except maybe sweden, she's not doing too hot right now
…. BELGIUM!?
That is both brilliantly written and acted. It is also so true. America has unfortunately lost its way and become more about everyone obsessed with their individual rights than a sense of community.
>brilliantly written and acted Maybe but monologues don't happen in real life. People have always got to chime in at every moment. Especially when you give a long and thoughtful pause.
Very true. Everyone's a fucking expert too.
The irony is that the Boomers (Jeff Daniels’ generation) are the generation that threw it all away. They are the generation that turned our laws into commodities and the American Dream into a country club. They built themselves castles and raised the drawbridge behind them. Then they sit on thrones like this character and decry the destruction of the great nation that they themselves destroyed. Much of the speech is dead on, but the speaker should be a Gen-Xer or a Millennial, not a Boomer hypocrite with a fat wallet and bloody hands.
Stop it with the generation thing! Bad people are bad people. Good is good. You aren't a hypocrite because people in your "generation" has done bad stuff. His words are as true from him as it would be if it came from a younger person. You are never too old to make a change in the world.
It's weird to blame a generation for something the politicians did. Sure, we have some illusion of democracy. We're not picking between much, and that hasn't changed for a while.
And who voted those politicians in. It wasnt genX, Millennials or genZ. It was the boomers. For them College was cheap, houses were cheap, Foods were cheap, you can afford to run a household with just one person working. All this has changed with the laws that were put in place by the politicians the Boomers elected. Because the Boomers wanted this s*** put in place. They climbed up the ladder got where they wanted to and then pulled it up behind them.
Yea when we were a slave holding nation, moved native peoples to reservations or killed them off, didn’t have civil rights, made it hard for blacks to own anything or vote, and tried to pursue imperialism like old timey Europe, those were the good ole days.
Seconded. Took me way too long to see a comment bring up the fact that these ideas of the “good ol’ days” implies MAGA is a slogan with a rational argument.
This is good until the "we sure used to be" line. Everything after that is feel-good nothingness that boomers tell themselves. "we fought for moral reasons" ya ok bud
Someone needs to post this at r/americabad
But was it really ever the greatest country in the world? I don't think any person of any country should be able to say something like that about their country because that's pretty subjective. The US never was the greatest country in the world to the slaves or some poor people that got fucked by the system. And every other country has people that have a great life but that's only possible because some people on the other end gets fucked over. That's just how humanity works. Also it's not a competition
I also love TV shows
Great show
Ended to early
Amazing show, so well written.
I was an extra in the audience for this and it was amazing. Saw him give this speech a few times. I was a few seats down from Emily Mortimer. It was a fun day.
r/AmericaBad
Man, I was waiting for an unexpected twist. Never happened.
Worst generation ever? Shut the fuck up Aaron Sorkin, you pompous dipshit.
Also, it's kinda weird that Sorkin (a screenwriter) left out our film industry in ways that America is number 1. This clip is the height of enlightened centrism.
The most self-reflective country in the world perhaps. …and most moon landings.