Pajiba

I love The West Wing and I generally agree with Aaron Sorkin's sentiments on this matter.

But this part: ...a visceral (look it up) problem...
makes him seem like a bit of a smart-arse.

The editor should have called him on that.

His first response in the full article to her directive to "save your condemnation" was way more blunt than that, Simon.

I would disagree with the use of "vicious" to describe Sorkin's piece.
"Honest" and "truthful" would be more accurate.

Although decidedly not a conservative, I always respected William F. Buckley for his intellectual rigor and intelligence.
The "leaders" of today's conservatives are ignorant buffoons and it's about time they were called out for the empty posturing, inconsistent policy positions and pandering to the lowest common demoninator.

In their current form, the conservative right has perfected the art of politics while completely failing at the art of governance.
They don't even pretend to give a shit about their constituents, consistently and unwaveringly prepared to advance an agenda over the needs of the very people who voted them to power.

Although I'm sure Aaron Sorkin has no desire to be so, I sure wish he was the President today.

I don't have a caribou in this fight, but it seems like a good place to put this:

www.post-gazette.com/pg/10342/1109127-100.stm?cmpid=MOSTEMAILEDBOX

And, for the record, that Bartlett beatdown ranks as one of my favorite 4 minutes in TV history.

that Bartlett beatdown ranks as one of my favorite 4 minutes in TV history.

I never got into "West Wing," but yeah, that clip is golden.

She needs to be shot through a wormhole that leads to a room... WITH A MOOSE. Just her and the moose, for all eternity.

"Grrr! Something's broken...AND IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT?!"

"I know....I'm scared too"

Sorkin shouldn't be President, he should be the President's speechwriter.

"Toby?"
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"That's how I beat him." (a Christian fundamentalist opponent early in his political career)

Christian Toto, don't tell me you didn't find it hilarious when Dick Cheney shot that dude in the face. And sad too, of course. But there's a separation of sadness because something bad has happened and happiness because a horrible person just got called out for being so awful. They're not mutually exclusive.

Also, Aaron Sorkin! Best freaking writer ever.

People who hate Palin this much ... and have this much hate in their souls ... what's left to say at this point? Book a counselor.

I agree. Doesn't anyone out there just feel like she's just a joke? People only seem to love or hate her and I don't get it. She's a clown. She's the embodiment of everything that is wrong with our politicians. She's not evil or deserving of vitriol. She's the fop.

I imagine at least part of the reason she draws so much fire is because so many people want the clown to be the Ring Master.

And to Sorkin's point "I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart..."

Good. But does anyone do a dance of joy when they can score the leather chairs or belt for half price? Or when they eat an amazing meaty meal?

Because it's really the same thing as dancing for joy at the death of the animal. It's just that the really hard part has been outsourced to someone else.

I call shenanigans on this whole thing - I don't appreciate that the liberal media is making me say things that look like I'm sticking up for Sarah Palin.

She needs to be shot through a wormhole that leads to a room... WITH A MOOSE. Just her and the moose, for all eternity. - BSlim

Hell is other meeses.

Sbrown, I agree. Sorkin basically says “I’ll eat the meat but I don’t want to do the dirty work,” and calls Palin out for eating the meat AND doing the dirty work. That’s ridiculous. If you’re going to eat meat, you ought to RESPECT the people who do the dirty work. Not that I don’t think Palin was a little overenthusiastic, but still. I find Sorkin’s whole argument flawed, and I’m glad I’m not the only one.

Fredo, I’ve heard she’s not a very good hunter, so she definitely scored herself yet MORE hypocrisy points because she keeps claiming she’s all about the hunting. On the other hand, it takes practice to build any skill, so her being a lousy hunter wouldn’t bother me if she’d just acknowledge it in any way.

To reference another TWW moment from Ainsley Hayes, this isn't about liking or not liking hunting, it's about not liking the PEOPLE who like hunting. Aaron Sorkin doesn't like hunters. Making fun of them or berating them is not how you draw people to your cause. And he should know better. He wrote the show.

Also, there is nothing wrong with hunting if you USE the animal. It actually creates a deep level of respect between man and beast. Or at least from man to beast. Hunting just to put a head on the wall however is just gross. Look at the difference between the Plains Indians Buffalo Hunts, and the hunts of fur traders who nearly wiped out the entire population for nothing more than the hide.

BigTodd, is that you?

People are killing babies, now? Since when?!

Oh, you mean abortion? I'm not sure if a fetus with no heart or brain or even hands and feet constitutes an "unborn child". That said, I hear a baby's back ribs are to-kill-for.

There are actually scores of people who do hunt to feed their families. I know them, I grew up with them. I don't have a problem with that. There are people for whom, if they want to provide meat for their families, it is a real economic necessity to hunt.

I do have a problem with hunting for sport, which is what Sarah Palin is doing. Even if she and her family do eat that meat, it doesn't change the fact that she does not need to hunt, and she is doing it for the pure enjoyment of it.

It is true that Americans don't need to hunt for food any longer. No one can intelligently debate that.

However, just because the need is no longer there doesn't mean that hunting should be abolished or that hunters should be looked down upon. I would remind you that humans are omnivores; we are built to eat just about anything. In fact, our bodies need the protein that meat gives us to grow and survive (though earliest cave finds show that early hominids were most likely scavengers, since the majority of unearthed animal bones in hominid habitats were skulls and feet, where the least amount of meat hangs to the bone -- also because humans are typically communal, it is intelligently assumed that we would have been more likely to chase off predators and steal a kill rather than proficiently hunt for it -- though it should be noted that this all changed with the last ice age, which forced us to change habits and turn to hunting and fishing for more sustainence).

The point is that hunting is natural. Guns and helocopters just make it easier.

It's more than a little hypocritical and disingenuous to criticize her for her actions, considering the length and breadth of human history and our tight relationship with hunting. I don't see anything irresponsible in her actions. Though I seriously doubt that the woman dragged her kill home, skinned it, cured the meat and stored it for later consumption like our ancestors; I also strongly doubt they left it to rot in a feild.

If she should be criticized for anything, it should be for presenting herself as some kind of great outdoors-woman when she is clearly a novice, and for using the sport of hunting to further her political persona. And none of that has anything to do with the merits/shortcomings of actual hunters or hunting for sport; it has to do with her clownish ambition.

The Palin hate is getting out of control. I'm a conservative, but I don't like her. I think she's a bit of a buffoon. But still, people focus on her like she's the devil. She's just another politician.

And comparing her to Vick is just plain idiotic. Vick was dog-fighting, a sport that involves the torture of animals for fun. It's not that the dogs are dying, it's that they're ripping each other apart. Plus, it's illegal. Hunting is not only legal, but enjoyed by a whole lot of people, most of whom could survive without the meat from the kill. Face it. People enjoy hunting, just as they always have. It's part of the natural order of things.

Oh, and Sorkin? This piece is exactly the reason I hated the West Wing. The condescension and arrogance drips off the page. Get over yourself. You haven't written a good show since Sports Night.

First, let me say that I loathe Sarah Palin, and from what I've seen of her show, she does not strike me as an experienced outdoorswoman. So in some ways I am predisposed to agree with Mr. Sorkin. And yet...First of all, if you eat meat and wear leather, you have, in my opinion, no right to criticize those who hunt. As other posters have noted, this only indicates that you have no problem with animals being slaughtered, as long as someone else is doing the dirty work. Then Sorkin goes on to draw a farcical parallel between hunting and Michael Vick's dogfighting activities. This is such unmitigated bullshit that I find it hard to believe that even such a smug, sanctimonious hypocrite as Sorkin could have said it. The dogs involved in dogfighting are raised and trained through brutally cruel and disgusting methods to get into a ring and tear each other apart. Other smaller animals including cats and dogs are sacrificed to instill bloodlust and joy of killing in the fighting dogs. Once a fighting dog has reached the end of its useful life, or if it does not measure up in the pit, it is killed. It is a brutal, degrading and inhumane activity, which is totally illegal, as Michael Vick found out. It has no similarity whatsoever with hunting, which involves none of the barbaric cruelty and enjoyment of watching animals suffer that is the raison d'etre of dogfighting. At the end of a successful hunt, when a hopefully a clean, humane kill is made (which is what all hunters strive for) the animal is butchered and eaten. There is simply no similarity between the two. In fact, I would say that in terms of cruelty, factory farming (the industry which yields the meat and leather Sorkin enjoys) has far more in common with dogfighting than hunting does.

So Mr. Sorkin, go after Sarah Palin-I'm with you. Criticize her for being a phony, a poseur who is trying to bolster her credibility with NRA types by pretending to be something she isn't-I agree. But don't draw asinine comparisons between hunting and organized, criminal animal cruelty. The case to be made against her is strong enough without engaging in that sort of false equivalency.

No one in this country hunts to feed their family.

It is true that Americans don't need to hunt for food any longer. No one can intelligently debate that.

Check your privilege, folks. Plenty of people hunt to feed their family, many of them because they need to if they're going to eat well during the winter. Farming pays for shit.

My grandpa went out annually and bagged his one allowed deer on the first day, not for sport, but because that's a fuckton of meat and a hunting license costs less than slaughtering a cow that can continue to provide you with more little cows. Which he also slaughtered himself until a meat processing service opened in town. My brother in law follows this tradition. I haven't killed the chickens, ducks, and geese, but I've been made to pluck them. There are good reasons people don't like processing their own meat and poultry, but sometimes, that's how you get fed.

That being said, Palin is still a troll for making a spectacle of killing caribou (Not moose, people. Moose will fuck you up. Beware the moose.) instead of treating the process with a measure of respect. I know there are lots of people like her, and I don't have anything good to say about them, either.

I have a lot of problems with Sarah Palin, but I have no problem with her killing wild animals who have lived completely free-range lives, taking care to kill them with a clean shot, following hunting guidelines, and cleaning them to bring all edible meat to eat at home (likely in place of a cow steak from a confined methane producing farm). All of which she appeared to do.

I fucking hate that cunt. That is all.

I'm ignoring most of this because ehh. (Though I liked the West Wing clip, haven't seen the show, so it's new to me). But I wanted to applaud Clocker for this elegant summary:
Although decidedly not a conservative, I always respected William F. Buckley for his intellectual rigor and intelligence.
The "leaders" of today's conservatives are ignorant buffoons and it's about time they were called out for the empty posturing, inconsistent policy positions and pandering to the lowest common demoninator.
In their current form, the conservative right has perfected the art of politics while completely failing at the art of governance.
They don't even pretend to give a shit about their constituents, consistently and unwaveringly prepared to advance an agenda over the needs of the very people who voted them to power.
Republicans are the better politicians overall, though both groups could be called out for inconsistent policy positions. They are good at getting people to believe what they want people to believe, when they need them to.

The comments here are fun to read both pro and con.
What is not fun to read is the attitude that this woman is just a clown, dont take her seriously.
Palin is going to run for president and millions of people are going to support her. Those two things are facts. Now a lot of people will pooh pooph this and say she will never get the nomination and if she does she cant win. How do you know that? How can you be sure? Who saw Obama being elected 4 years ago?
That's why you have to take her seriously.
Stupid and powerful equals deadly.
Posted by: logan at December 8, 2010 4:50 PM

Precisely.
It's pertinent to note that two of the biggest fundraisers in the last cycle were Michele Bachmann and Christine O'Donnell, two of the most obviously batshit insane candidates in recent memory.

Furthermore, the crazed Citizens United Supreme Court decision has opened corporate coffers into the political process and it's only a question of how much new underwear Palin will demand in exchange for our souls and futures.

Criticizing her for hunting? That's what you call "lay[ing] waste?"

Weeeeeaaaaaak.

Michael Vick leads the voting for the Pro Bowl.

Just sayin'.

It just dawned on me:

A: The Oscars are a scant two months away, nominations even closer.

B: Sorkin will, in all likelihood, be up for nomination for his Social Network script.

3: The real reason he his "laying waste" to Palin is by appealing to the lowest common denominator: The voting academy members.

This is nothing but a ploy to drum up ill-gotten support from the hate-everything-conservative Hollywood in his hunt for oscar glory.

And it makes him look like a whiney bitch.

"Oh, you mean abortion? I'm not sure if a fetus with no heart or brain or even hands and feet constitutes an "unborn child""

Though I have no desire to get into any abortion date, for the record, a fetus develops a working heart after 21 days of gestation, at which time it begins pumping blood that is different than its mothers. That's about the time that most women realize that they are late and get a test.

Any abortions performed after the three week mark, (most are within 3-9 weeks of conception,) are probably aborting a cluster of cells with a beating heart that is a lifeform reliant on, but independent of, the mother. Meaning at that point it's technically not your body anymore, just as a tapeworm living in your colon is completely dependent on you for survival yet still not technically a part of your body.

@SomeGuy FTW.

Note to self: When somebody in the Winning Through Name Recognition business starts fame-whoring more than usual, look around for the upcoming beauty contest. Sometimes it's about Mobilizing The Base.

I am so ashamed that I didn't think of this immediately. I'm gonna get kicked out of the Captain Renault club if I don't get my cynicism back on line.

I think there are plenty of good reasons to criticize Palin without bringing hunting (or her personal grooming) into it. It is low hanging fruit and unworthy of Sorkin's time and talent. There is no true conservation without regulated responsible hunting. Palin is a very good shot, a registered gun owner, and I would suspect has all the appropriate licenses. If she wants to kill, field dress, and eat game, legally, what the hell is the big deal? So she happily (and LEGALLY) shot an ungulate. Is there a shortage?
I have fished (fly and deep sea) and have killed, gutted, and subsequently ate fish ranging from 6"-6'. I have also killed a full gown deer with my bare hands. It had been hit by a car and was horribly wounded, so it was a mercy, and it was the only time in my life I wished I had a gun. Except when being menaced by the fucking coyotes, whose corpses I would happily pile high if I got the chance. I have not felt the need to hunt game, but if it were necessary or more a part of the culture of my family, I am sure I would have. Stupid non-arguments like this is why the left looks STUPID an increasing amount of the time. I love Sorkin's writing, I will gleefully watch anything with his name on it, but this is really a waste of his talent.
Oh, and Bartlet for Prez.

It seems a lot of people have decided that Sorkin's a pompous windbag and that Palin had every right to shoot that moose. That may be true, but I still agree with Sorkin's overall point: that Palin was not shooting that animal so she could feed her family that night, she was shooting it for a TV show, so she could reinforce her (bullshit) image as a gun-slinging outdoorswoman.

For fuck's sake people, if you can't tell the difference between Caribou and Moose, please come up to the Great White North, we'll edumacate youse.

American Tourist (pointing at Polar Bear): Is that a giant albino beaver?

Unassuming Canadian: Yes, yes it is. And they love hugs. Here, try and feed him this bacon!

Sorkin put pretty much this same message in SportsNight's Jeremy Goodwin's mouth about 11 years ago:

"The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and I closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was. That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin. And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports! It was just mean!"