The following is the Weekly Dennis, that is, Dennis Prager’s column at Townhall.com.
Dennis printed a warning prelude to his column which I have included below. Aaron Sorkin has a foul tongue which he exercises freely…..a habit of many, many leftwingers. Readers will discover his vulgarity soon enough without any warning.
“EDITORS NOTE: THERE IS LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT THE COLUMN THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME READERS. THANK YOU.
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 TLC mini-series reality TV show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”
Sorkin opened with a quote from 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 a rare uncontrolled outburst, 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 any 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 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 “murder” exclusively to describe 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 shooting a caribou and 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 or 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 Palin — who best fits the description of her he wrote in his column. The only other explanation would be that he so hates her that he will say anything, including turning moral standards upside down, in order to insult her.
Good people can differ on 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 Sorkin wrote about her?
Ironically, all Sorkin’s column achieves is an elevation of Palin’s status. If people can be judged by those who hate them, 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 Hollywood’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.”
Comment: During his radio program today, Dennis was interviewing the journalist who had written the book, Gray Lady Down, a review of the current fall of the New York Times from the prestige it used to emanate when the enterprise was less focussed on advancing a Marxist Big Government Leftwing agenda. It was an excellent interview.
A caller, a Roman Catholic complained about the New York Times prejudices against his religion. He was questioning, rather nervously and clumsily in my view, that since the paper is Jewish-owned, did that have something to do with its assault on Catholic Christianity? Dennis picked it up as a “conspiracy” accusation and confronted the caller, cutting him off in a somewhat gentle but awkward way, and knowing Dennis by the hundreds of hours I have listened to him, this was not at all by intent.
One of the great pleasures of listening to Dennis’ radio show is the high level of conversation he elicits from his callers. One truly comes to love so many of them for their perceptions, comments, and style they bring to the show.
For those of you readers who haven’t yet listened to Dennis Prager’s Radio Show, shame on you for it is uplifting in so many ways.
Dennis is either accepting more abrasive calls from those with some degree of hostility toward Jewishness, whatever that may include, or his show is reaching a broader listenership which brings in more calls from a broader group of folks. I personally root for both.
Also, personally I am not Jewish either by blood or personal choice, although I could be ‘religiously’. But I have lived in a ‘Jewish’ community of one kind or another most of my life. Behaviors of speech and thought displayed by this Aaron Sorkin are behaviors which have been more common among some Jewish communities than any other that I have ever known until about twenty years ago. Never had I ever come across a Christian group whose members so often spoke with such vulgarity until the collapse of Christian influence in the culture at large.
No one in my family either on my Dad’s ancient Anglo-Saxon side or among my Mother’s more recent German immigrants EVER SWORE. EVER! None of us were allowed to. We are talking about 150 people in my Mother’s community and maybe 75 in my Dad’s. None of my friends in my entire life swore in my presence. I heard such words expressed only by some Jewish kids flagrantly and only outdoors.
But, the ‘f’ word didn’t appear in my world until the 1960s. That is two years after I was in the Army, by the way. It wasn’t allowed to be spoken there either, even from the cadre. Even in basic training cursing was simply non-existent in the general conversation.
My Mother, however, did have one speech habit which was declared ‘cursing’ by Marie Hart, the proud, well educated, Roman Catholic teacher of my 9th grade General Science class, one of my favorites of all time. At home I’d regularly hear “Oh, my Lord” often in situations where amazement was declared as a substitute for “Can you beat that?”
Now, Miss Hart was also my Home Room teacher, so I cannot quite remember the actual location of my sin, but by habit, I admit I “swore” by Miss Hart’s standards once, for I had used “Oh, my Lord” as an emphasis showing amazement……not at all to challenge her in any way to cause trouble.
My punishment I do remember. I had to stay after school in her room for 45 minutes for the next three days. Now, this public high school was located about five miles from my house. There were no city school buses in those days. This ninth grader as well as nearly all of the others at the school had to find their way on their own to get to and from school. Only those students who lived in Roseville, a suburb 15 -20 miles away were bused in.
One final generalization here……Sarah Palin’s Alaska-life habits are about the farthest possible from those habits which create this vulgar Mr. Sorkin….vulgar of speech and vulgar of thought, in my view, of course.
Mr. Sorkin does hate her and those ‘like her’ viscerally, I believe. Such ‘Palin” folks are too primitive to be allowed. Ms. Palin reminds me very much of the very best of my Mother…….a “roll-up-your-sleeve-and-get-the-job-done” kind of person. I smile in delight every time I see Governor Palin on televison.
Even today, if I had simply listened to a reading of Mr. Sorkin’s critique without knowing his name, I would have answered, if asked, that the author was Jewish…….and, in my experience….lived in New York City.
Most of my friends, those with whom I feel most free to express my “me” are Jewish……hang on, now…….they are all but one, conservatives……not conversions over the past year or so, but long time thinkers. They are as remote from the Aaron Sorkin’s of the world as ,I believe, I am. They are not unhappy people.
When I was a child being raised in the Highland Park area of St. Paul, the large Jewish community was a Jewish community rather than a happy one. It preferred to be isolated.
And the Sorkins do seem to be unhappy. They are Leftwing Jews. They are leftwing primarily because the enemy of their ‘race’ when living in Europe was the Christian establishment. For centuries this was usually not a happy mix for an active and energetic minority never large enough to rule. Jewish immigrants brought stories of atrocities across the Atlantic with them throughout the decades with the belief that if you’ve met one Christian, you have met them all.
The unhappiest of any group are likely to become extremists or at least, the most extreme critics……as was the case in Europe with the rise of the various Marxist movements. These are anti-Christian movements and affect high intellectual thinkings, some even earned……a natural attraction for any ‘non-believing’ Jews.
In the world of Political Correctness of my time, meaning my high school years to the end of the Viet Nam war, (1948-1975) no one non-Jewish could carry on any conversation critical of anything Jewish. Every article in the Twin City newspapers until about 1975 or 1980 about the Middle East crises….there have been so many….were written by Jews…..admittedly a few rather fair in their description of Palestinian issues.
These were the years when Israel was fighting for its life in more realistic terms…..including real wars.
MN Prager Discussion Group 