Aaron Sorkin—the walk-and-talk auteur behind liberal fantasies The West Wing and The Newsroom (as well as Sports Night)—has a problem with the Huffington Post: He thinks it's too mean.
"I don't think we're very nice to each other anymore," Asawin Suebsaeng quoted Sorkin as saying at a recent event. "There's just too much money to be made and too much fun to be had laughing at somebody else fail. And that's become okay. ... The homepage of the Huffington Post. '13 Epic #Fails.'"
It was, in typical Sorkin fashion, less of a fully fleshed out thought than the gesture at a fully fleshed out thought. It was, also, deeply ironic, as Sorkin himself is an unpleasant person who is frequently mean to people. Here are three times that Aaron Sorkin has been kind of a jerk.
1. "Listen here, Internet Girl"
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Aaron Sorkin has a problem with women. His problem is that he is frequently a condescending creep to them. Such was the case when, displeased by the questions a reporter was asking him, he decided to put her in her place:
Sorkin doesn't see this. He denies being either an ideologue or a modernist, agreeing only that the show is written in his voice, and that said voice is "authorial" (both my word and his). I’d posit that creating an authorial drama in a time of mumbling, precarious, voice-of-a-generation comedy almost absolutely constitutes an ideology, one both modernist and masculinist. But conveniently, at that moment, the interview’s over.
"Listen here, Internet girl," he says, getting up. "It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while." I’m not sure how he’s forgotten that I am writing for a newspaper; looking over the publicist’s shoulder, I see that every reporter is from a print publication (do not see: Drew Magary). I remind him. I say also, factually, "I have a New York Times subscription and an HBO subscription. Any other advice?"
2. "Sarah Palin's an idiot"
It's not just relatively anonymous female reporters that Sorkin has a problem with. He also hates prominent female politicians and news commentators. Here are Sorkin's thoughts on the 2008 GOP VP candidate and former governor of Alaska:
"Sarah Palin's an idiot. Come on, this is a remarkably, this is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean woman."
3. "You're a brilliant and funny woman in the body of an idiot"
Continuing a trend of being kind of a jerk to women and feeling comfortable announcing their idiocy, Sorkin used a gossip reporter who he went out on a few dates with as the foundation of a character in The Newsroom. In addition to telling the woman that she is "a brilliant and funny woman in the body of an idiot," he inspired the following reaction from the lass:
So when I finally watched episode 4 of "The Newsroom," called "I'll Try to Fix You," and gossip columnist Nina Howard (played by Hope Davis) throws herself at Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) and tells him bitterly, "You just passed up a sure thing," and Will later complains, "I was the victim of an unwanted sexual advance," oh my God, I felt like such a fucking asshole.
I will tell you that I fully cried, totally humiliated at the wreckage of what happens when you are a scheming little manipulating starfucker such as myself.
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