Aaron Sorkins..."The Newsroom"

[onmyknees]

This might not go down the way you had hoped , so if you're one of those many progressives on here....you may want to back out of this now...famed screen writer Alex Pareen writing for Salon.com on Aaron Sorkin's progressive new series, The Newsroom writes


Liberal Salon.com writer Alex Pareene did not mince words Thursday while inducting The Newsroom and The West Wing screenwriter Aaron Sorkin into Salon‘s annual “Hack List.”
“Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals,” Pareene began. “He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy.”
The famed screenwriter, Pareene argues, further fuels the “delusional self-regard” that harms the image of modern progressives: “He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic ‘everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid’ attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him.”
Pareene goes on to decry Sorkin’s “increasingly curdled and miserable worldview,”



I've read the article several times and substituted Prospero, Buttslinger, Trish, and BlueGasCat for Sorkin, and I'm afraid it describes each of you perfectly. And the beauty of it all ?? You can't blame your usual whipping boy Fox News or me for any of it...Pareene is hardly a conservative or libertarian....but he sure the hell has an insight as to why the rest of us hate liberals. Enjoy the rest of the review.........

http://www.mediaite.com/online/liber...hate-liberals/

[trish]

"OMK feints toward open-mindedness, he is transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy.” Yeah that's works.

[Stavros]

This might not go down the way you had hoped , so if you're one of those many progressives on here...

Just out of idle curiosity, what is a 'Progressive' -in its American context? Wasn't Theo Roosevelt a Progressive? And, if one is not 'Progressive', what are the alternatives? Regressive? Static?

[loveboof]

It's hard to see how being 'progressive' could be a bad attribute...

Doesn't that simply mean making progress? wanting things to be better?

[Prospero]

OMK....Ha .... Goebbels in full flight, but without the club foot or the brain

[Prospero]

As a British progressive and one of those who OMK loathes... (what a life he leads, so full of fear and loathing) - I'm happy to say that I have watched now four episodes of this new drama and it is actually very smug and a huge disapointment after the excellence of The West Wing. The political attitudes are totally on the money - but Sorkin and his co-writers have sacrificed art and subtlety to create a vehicle for a full throated attack on the poison of the tea party, on the way that a fine political party, the GOP, has been hijacked by extremists, the ludicrous lies of Rush Limbaugh, Fox and their ilk.... and the other ills of the new Right in America. It sure as hell isn't art, but his targets are well chosen.

However in the media landscape of contemporary America this is a murmur to place alongside the hysterical shrieking of the ignorant louts of the Right - represented in all their griminess on this forum by OMK - a convicted felon as well as a fool.

[hippifried]

Just out of idle curiosity, what is a 'Progressive' -in its American context? Wasn't Theo Roosevelt a Progressive? And, if one is not 'Progressive', what are the alternatives? Regressive? Static?

I've been asking the same question for years now. I know what it means as an adjective, but its use as philosophical or political descriptive noun has me baffled. It makes no sense in the "American context" or any other context. It's not a synonym for liberal. Liberal is an attitude, not a political stance. "Progress" describes the various incrimental accomplishments in striving for success of a specific goal, regardless of what the goal is. All political bents yammer on about "progress". Everybody's "a progressive"? That doesn't work. If you really need a word, make one up. I wish everybody'd just quit fucking with the dictionary.

[Stavros]

I agree; at one time in Europe people who used the word progressive were often Communists or sympathisers: 'I admire the progressive and freedom-loving peoples of the USSR'...if it did have a meaning in the USA in the 'Progressive era' I assume it was a reference to industrial and urban change as a positive thing, to be distinguished from a past coloured, as it were, by slavery. Whether or not the US was Progressive in 1910, I think the word sounds too odd to make sense these days.

Could there be a Progressive Transexual? Discuss, with examples.

PS. For the record, I have no idea who Aaron Sorkin is.

[trish]

I have no idea who Aaron Sorkin is.

Me neither, but if OMK hates him he must be a pretty admirable producer.

[Prospero]

Aaron Sorkin wrote the bulk of the long-running political series The West Wing and then wrote two screenplays, The Social Network (about Facebook) and Moneyball - about baseball. He is the main force behind this new series.