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Among the worst disasters for progressivism in recent decades has been the work of Aaron Sorkin, whose impossibly articulate ratatat dialogue made it way too easy to imagine sexy technocrats saving the world. It’s great entertainment, but normalized unreasonable expectations of the flawed human beings who happen to have high IQs and impeccable credentials. As a child of the New Left, I never missed The West Wing: it was irresistible catnip for my adolescent hopes and dreams, and so much more satisfying than whatever was on the news—except for the eloquent public intellectuals on the Bill Moyers show on PBS....

I saw this just now for the first time and liked it enough to put up here. I would like see more stuff like this. HBO's NEWSROOM Opening scene "Why America's Not the Greatest Country"

President Jed Bartlet, you were just too good for us.  It has long been known that liberals hold the television show The West Wing in a high esteem that feeds into their fantasies, especially in times where cold reality has not exactly gone as they (and creator Aaron Sorkin) would have hoped.  And this fantasy will only be intensified since this is the twentieth anniversary of the show's premiere. Another reason for liberals to fantasize ever more deeply in the parallel liberal world of The West Wing is obviously due to the the one they consider to be the intruder in...

Aaron Sorkin wrote a moving letter to his teenage daughter and her mother, Julia Sorkin, on Wednesday after Donald Trump won the presidential election.In the letter, addressed to “Sorkin Girls” and published on Vanity Fair, the creator of The West Wing and The Newsroom wrote that he felt powerless as he watched Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, and that his daughter’s tears spurred him to action.“Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it — this is truly horrible,” Sorkin wrote. “It’s hardly the...

"If you've got a factory full of children in China assembling phones for 17 cents an hour, you've got a lot of nerve calling someone else opportunistic." Aaron Sorkin has lashed out at Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent assertion that filmmakers were being "opportunistic" in making films about the late tech titan Steve Jobs.Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter during a press junket roundtable for Universal's Danny Boyle-directed Steve Jobs in London, the writer claimed that he and those working at the top of the project had taken pay cuts to get it made."Nobody did this movie to get rich,"...

Exclusive: The former Apple chief executive on Steve Jobs, the greatest current technology leaders and why Aaron Sorkin’s Jobs biopic will tell the truth about his and Jobs’ “amazing relationship” Steve Jobs (L) and John Sculley, pictured in 1983 Photo: CAP/NFS It goes without saying that Steve Jobs is perhaps the most famous business leader of the century, if not of all time. The late co-founder of Apple has become a deified figure since his death in 2011 aged 56 from pancreatic cancer, with each new product launch incurring a rash of ‘What Would Steve Do?’ think pieces and endless...

Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning role in Blue Jasmine "nothing close to the degree of difficulty" of any of the male nominees, says "The Social Network" screenwriter Female leading Hollywood film roles are "nothing close to the degree of difficulty" of male roles, one of America's leading screenwriters has said, in the latest set of leaked emails published by the "Guardians of Peace" hacker group. Aaron Sorkin, writer of The Social Network and Moneyball, singled out Cate Blanchett's 2014 Best Actress Oscar-winning performance in Blue Jasmine as significantly easier than the performances by the five male nominees that same year. “Year in...

Aaron Sorkin is disillusioned; he’s left to wonder if there is any "such thing as privacy anymore."Sorkin, famous Hollywood screenwriter who wrote The Social Network, Moneyball, and The West Wing, also wrote a New York Times editorial, sharing his views on the Sony hack of Hollywood emails: If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood. And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing. As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are...

Sony hacks: Sorkin says media are 'morally treasonous' By Anthony Zurcher Editor, Echo Chambers The messages read like something from a bad Hollywood film about Hollywood. The misbehaviour of egotistical studio executives, petulant stars and dictatorial directors seem almost too cliched to be true. But, apparently, they are. Major media outlets have been sifting through the voluminous trove of Sony Pictures emails made public by an anonymous group of hackers known as the Guardians of Peace for more than a week, picking out the particularly salacious details. The resulting stories have provided a candid look at the sometimes ugly, sometimes...

Hollywood producer attacks Angelina Jolie as 'spoiled brat with rampaging ego' In embarrassing emails leaked by Sony hackers Scott Rudin, producer of The Social Network and The Queen, claims the star's planned remake of Cleopatra will be an "ego bath" By Nick Allen, Los Angeles 8:14PM GMT 10 Dec 2014 An Oscar-winning Hollywood producer reportedly attacked Angelina Jolie as a "spoiled brat with a rampaging ego" in leaked emails. Scott Rudin, who produced films including The Social Network, Notes on a Scandal, Moneyball, and The Queen, made the comments in what appear to be a series of angry exchanges with...

A STRING of top Hollywood A-listers have signed a petition backing Israel and condemning Hamas. Actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Rogen, Sylvester Stallone and Minnie Driver were among nearly 200 famous signatories urging the terror organisation to stop firing rockets into Israel and work towards peace. Director Ivan Reitman, writer Aaron Sorkin and Roseanne Barr also signed the petition, which was published in the magazines Billboard, Variety and Hollywood Reporter. It comes after other celebrities, including Penelope Cruz, Rihanna and Selena Gomez criticised Israel's response to the rocket attacks. The petition - which asks Hamas to remember that 'Children...

Jane Fonda says conservative icons like Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly would benefit from watching Aaron Sorkin's show "The Newsroom," on which she plays a CEO of the company that owns the cable network. "Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, the tea partiers, Sarah Palin are the people that I wish would listen to it and really hear the logic of what is being said, you know, because it's the tension between a news division, a news bureau, that's trying to get good ratings as opposed to telling the truth, or telling what's an important story, and it's an important...

A close friend (who shares my affinity for selective anonymity) sent me this youtube clip and his comments, along with a request for my take on the excerpt from an episode of the program 'Newsroom', which is up for Emmy nominations. I will pass along the advisory note that he issued, as to the modest profanity employed by the lead character, because I always want to be up front about any content that might not be personally acceptable to any of my readers. Here's his question, the video and my reply: http://blastedfools.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/aaron-sorkin-the-crack-tv-writer/

People turning on HBO Sunday evening must have thought they'd accidentally switched channels to MSNBC. In the third episode of Aaron Sorkin's new drama Newsroom, those involved in the fictitious cable news network ACN all basically became MSNBC employees mercilessly attacking the Tea Party whilst comparing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to the late Joe McCarthy (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary): HBO's 'Newsroom' Becomes MSNBC: Trashes Tea Party, Compares Bachmann to McCarthyThe episode was done largely as a flashback. At the core was a meeting between heads of the parent company Atlantis World Media including CEO Leona Lansing played...

...I can remember when Bush got in for the second time, just feeling like so much of the problem about the way that politics go here is that people are improperly informed. That they didn’t know that they had been lied to, or they didn’t understand exactly to what extent they had been, and they still thought that there were weapons of mass destruction. And that was just crazy to me that people could be so under-informed. I do think that there’s a difference in America to where I’m from. There’s so much wrong with England, but I think people...

The most entertaining thing about Aaron Sorkin's upcoming HBO series, "The Newsroom," could well be the scathing review of the show by ABC News senior White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, which appeared in The New Republic. As a bonus, Tapper also provides an hilarious takedown of the increasingly annoying SorkinSpeak, the bizzare shorthand manner in which his characters communicate with each other. So take it away, Jake: “The Newsroom,” which debuts June 24 on HBO, is sadly disappointing. There’s much to criticize in the media—and TV news in particular. But though “The Newsroom” intends to lecture its viewers on the...

Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of "The Social Network" and creator of "The West Wing" at the 2011 Golden Globes.

On CNN recently, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, West Wing) called Sarah Palin an “idiot.” Let’s see to whom that label applies. Last week in the Huffington Post, Sorkin wrote a column attacking the ex-governor of Alaska and her reality-TV miniseries on TLC, Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Sorkin opened with a quote from Sarah Palin on the hypocrisy of meat-eaters who condemn hunting for food. He then proceeded with this response: “You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go f*** ourselves now.” That non-sequitur was the high point of Sorkin’s column. (Also, as I noted in my last column on the...

‘Social Network’ Scribe: ‘Sarah Palin’s an Idiot’ Posted By John Nolte On October 4, 2010 @ 7:02 pm You gotta love Leftist Hollywood. What a marketing plan. Three days after your multi-million dollar movie has an okay but nothing spectacular opening weekend, you send out into the world one of the film’s most recognizable faces (in asshole glasses, no less) to insult half your potential audience.

Original title: Aaron Sorkin Takes to CNN’s Parker Spitzer to Denounce Palin as ‘An Idiot,’ ‘Jaw-Droppingly Incompetent and Mean Woman’ Aaron Sorkin (IMDb page) came aboard the Monday premiere of CNN’s Parker Spitzer to promote the new movie, The Social Network, for which he wrote the screenplay, but used more of his air time to spout his anti-conservative and anti-Republican prejudices, starting with Sarah Palin. Prompted by Kathleen Parker for his assessment of Palin, Sorkin, creator of NBC’s The West Wing television drama, insulted Palin: Sarah Palin's an idiot. Come on. This is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean...