The Newsroom: Word Salad

Friday morning at ACN and Will’s having the most ridiculous conversation with the wardrobe guy about how he can’t put a specific pair of pants on. Whatever, Chance. Adam Arkin Roth is there. He and Will are old friends from their Bush 41 days and it’s all so jolly. He’s brought Tate Brady from the RNC and Charlie and Mackenzie join them so Sorkin can make a Greg Brady joke.

They sit around and rehash last week’s episode then Tate jokes about offering the debate to Nancy Grace before launching into the format the RNC wants to follow. Charlie’s all cryptic about trying something different and Will launches into how he and Adam always thought debates are phony. Yeah, and?

I’m not cranky, that’s just my face.

Oh, Will thinks they should treat the candidates like they’re on trial and he’s the prosecutor. Who would agree to that? Will thinks that if people who testify before house committees are subject to perjury charges so should candidates in debates. The hell? That’s inane. Debates have always been a colossal waste of time but where else will we get to watch Al Gore stalk around behind Dubya or Sarah Palin wink?

Will continues that there are no rules to the debate, he gets to grill, needle and prod the candidates as long as he’d like, after opening statements. Jim starts giving the mock Michele Bachmann statement so Tate can be all “Hey, he’s a dude,” and Will can say it’s not an SNL sketch because they are veering awfully close to parody.

The fake Risky Businessmusic starts up as Will questions them about everything but policy while they mostly stand their slack-jawed and Tate looks like a good political flack and wonders WTF? Why would they subject their already mostly-unhinged field to that kind of questioning? Tate asks to speak with Adam privately and Will offers his office, then smurfs at the staff that he thought it went well. Well, as well as you could have hoped since IT WAS A STUPID IDEA.

One of these things is not like the others.

Will barges in after he said they could speak privately and they all start arguing about how Will’s “not on the team” and this is what Adam and Will talked about and that somehow changing the debates to an adversarial format would be substantive campaign reform. Lawrence Lessig has something to say about that. Before I can have an idiocy blackout, though, I remember. Chance.

Tate thinks it’s stupid, because it is, and no candidate would agree to it, because they won’t. Plus, he thinks it was all just a show for Will to prove he’s a big, bad man. Poor Adam is relieving Mackenzie as Will’s knob-polisher but Tate doesn’t give a shit. He’s not going to let someone else humiliate the candidates since they do a pretty bang-up job of it themselves. They’ll follow RNC rules and no Mackenzie.