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 Grammy Awards nominees for Record of the Year, while most people use expletives in private conversation or in rare uncontrolled outbursts, the Hollywood and art-world Left uses expletives in public discourse and in writing as a matter of course.)
Sorkin was furious that the documentary showed Palin hunting and killing a caribou. Although she made it clear that she intended to eat the animal, according to Sorkin, she had committed an act of murder and torture. To quote Sorkin:
“I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals.”
“I don’t watch snuff films and you [Palin] make them.”
“I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you [Palin] get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing.”
“I get happy every time one of you faux-macho s***heads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.”
“That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain.”
“Sarah Palin is deranged.”
Sorkin admits that he eats meat and wears leather. So while he and almost all of us in the affluent West can eat healthfully without eating any meat, Sorkin chooses to have animals killed solely for his culinary pleasure. In other words, he is morally at peace with paying others to kill animals for what is in fact the “fun” of eating meat. But when Sarah Palin hunts and kills an animal for food, she is a murderer and torturer.
And while on the subject of torture, isn’t there more torture in the way in which most animals are confined and killed in the slaughter mills of modern society than in the killing of an individual animal while it freely roams in the wild?
As for comparing Palin’s TV show to a “snuff film,” what kind of mind likens the murder of an innocent person on film to hunting a caribou? There is an answer: the Hollywood leftist mind.
Likewise Sorkin’s use of the word “murdered.” Outside of his confused moral universe, humanity has always reserved that word exclusively for describing the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. It has never been used to describe the killing of an animal. By Sorkin’s logic, his eating meat renders him a mass murderer.
No wonder, then, that Sorkin sees no difference between Palin’s shooting a caribou and Michael Vick’s using dogs to kill one another in a sadistic sporting event.
I return to the question: Does Sorkin really not see a difference between hunting an animal for food, torturing an animal, and murdering a human being — especially given the fact that he pays people to kill animals for his joy in eating them?
If he sees no difference, then it is he — not Sarah Palin — who best fits the description of her he gave in his column. The only other explanation would be that he so hates her that he will say anything, in order to insult her, even if he has to turn moral standards upside-down.
Good people can differ on Sarah Palin’s political positions or on whether she should run for president in the next election. But what has she ever said, written, or done to justify Sorkin’s hatred and cruelty? Indeed, what has she ever said or written that was as infantile or morally foolish as what Aaron Sorkin wrote about her?
Ironically, all Sorkin’s column achieves is an elevation of Sarah Palin’s status. If people can be judged by those who hate them, Sarah Palin must be more impressive than many people have realized.
So, how does one explain Sorkin’s irrational hatred and morally twisted thinking?
As noted earlier, it is indicative of the Hollywood-leftist mindset. Members of Hollywod’s Left generally live in a left-wing cocoon. What strikes most people who live outside of that cocoon as irrational and immoral is often regarded as brilliant in that world. To the rest of us, comparing shooting a caribou to a snuff film, to murder, and to torture is the ranting of an immature and morally confused mind. But among many of Sorkin’s peers on the cultural Left, Sorkin’s column is not merely brilliant, it is f***ing brilliant.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website,dennisprager.com.