I’d never felt compelled to comment on anything at The Huffington Post before, though they routinely posted items so vitriolic and egregiously idiotic as to tempt me. I’m more of a Corner (at NRO) or a Big Hollywood type of reader. But via Big Hollywood, I came across a piece by Aaron Sorkin denouncing Sarah Palin (as if I even had to complete that sentence).
I took a look through Sorkin’s article, which had all the symptoms of Palin Derangement Syndrome: aggressive name-calling, a hysterical, breathlessly upset tone, and extreme paranoia regarding her ability and willingness to retaliate against anyone who even sneezes in her direction. But one part in particular caught my eye:
“I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.”
I can’t imagine he got so upset over John Kerry blowing away birds with a shotgun some six years ago, but never mind. I can’t confess surprise that he’d essentially state that he gets happiness out of hunting accidents, because anyone who has seen a few episodes of “The West Wing” would know he thinks of conservatives and those who hold differing world views as effectively subhuman.
What struck me, though, was that he boasted about his inability to discern degrees of right and wrong between shooting a caribou and a dog-fighting operation. On one hand, you have someone legally shooting an animal with a rifle. Even assuming it lived past the gunshot, it’s not going to be around very long, and can be then transmuted into nourishment. On the other hand, you have a guy who illegally ran a sadistic game that meted out immeasurable cruelty to animals, even allegedly participating in the execution of the animals.
Even a rather dim fellow could see the difference, but that’s assuming he’s not possessed by a rabid hatred of all things Palin. I myself am hardly a Palin fan, though I felt compelled to write a comment on the post simply to throw in a couple of cents for the non-insane side of the argument. My post was a rather close to this:
“Aaron Sorkin can’t tell the difference between hunting a caribou and running a dog-fighting ring? Big shocker. This is the same guy who has proven incapable of writing a right-of-center character in a manner that seems even vaguely human, whose SNL series was largely a platform to rehash every argument he ever had with his Christian ex-girlfriend.
“Most of the people I know from Alaska can’t stand Palin incessant portrayal of the area as filled with people obsessed with bears and moose hunting. But that’s hardly more phony than a bunch of liberals who become morally outraged over Palin killing a wild animal. “
After a moment, I remembered that I’d actually intended to complement a couple of Sorkin’s last works that I enjoyed, and added this:
“I’ll give Sorkin credit where it is due, though: “Charlie Wilson’s War” was rather good, and “The Social Network” is extraordinary.”
Several minutes later, I notice the latter post had gone up, but the former remained nowhere to be seen. I tried again a couple more times, even removing the SNL jab, only to find they’d obviously been rejected by the moderators.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Though my post was cutting, I hardly thought of it (or any of my subsequent attempts) as incendiary or even a fraction as mean in tone as the original article.
After all, I didn’t claim to derive joy from hearing about people shooting each other in the face. But if The Huffington Post wants a rep as a site that rejects criticism of its writers, then so be it, though I’m a bit red-faced over expecting more.
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