Everyone’s talking about this Aaron Sorkin story, and I love it because it’s a perfect illustration of the type of douchebaggery that permeates contemporary life:
“Listen here, Internet girl,” he says, getting up. “It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.” I’m not sure how he’s forgotten that I am writing for a newspaper; looking over the publicist’s shoulder, I see that every reporter is from a print publication (do not see: Drew Magary). I remind him. I say also, factually, “I have a New York Times subscription and an HBO subscription. Any other advice?”
He looks surprised, then high-fives me. Being not a person who high-fives or generally makes physical contact with interview subjects, I look more surprised.
“I’m sick of girls who don’t know how to high-five,” he says. He makes me try to do it “properly,” six times. He also makes me laugh; I’m nervous, and it’s so absurd. He loves it. He says, “Let me manhandle you.” Then he ambles off, hoping I’ll write something nice, as though he has never known how the news works, how many stories can be true.
I know I’m supposed to like Aaron Sorkin, because he wrote West Wing, but I hate this kind of misogynist bullshit.
Mnemosyne
Yes, and as long as you only pay attention to their interviews and don’t actually bother to watch their movies, you’ll know that Spike Lee really, really hates whitey and Quentin Tarantino is a racist douchebag.
In other words — meh. Sorkin is such a horrible, horrible misogynist that he cast Jane Fonda as the head of the network on his new show.
ETA: And given the various “these kids today should get off my lawn” comments he’s been putting into his characters’ mouths on “The Newsroom,” this seems like more of that than anything specifically misogynist.
Larold
A bag of wet fart bread would be more appetizing.
shortstop
Ugh. But my understanding is that he inappropriately condescends to pretty much everyone.
ETA: I like how I say “my understanding” like it comes from anything different than reading and watching shit here and there.
Jewish Steel
Don’t leave your girlfriend alone with grandpa.
MikeJ
I’ve met too many artists to think that there’s any correlation between “great artist” and “not an asshole”.
DougJ
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure he’d try the bullying high-five stuff with another man.
redshirt
Need a parody of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” with “Internet Girl”. Get it on, Tubes!
DougJ
@MikeJ:
I agree, I loved the Facebook movie.
rb
More over-rated: “The West Wing,” or Sorkin himself? I’d go with the former, but it’s a close thing.
rb
@DougJ: If he did, he’d have punctuated it with “I’m sick of girls who don’t know how to high five.”
So: yeah, misogyny.
Hypatia's Momma
@DougJ: Or said, “internet boy” to one.
Shinobi
It’s funny that Sorkin is such a creepy misogynist. I’m actually really enjoying The Newsroom, despite my angry feminist core. I find several of the female characters interesting, especially the young blonde who seems to have internalized so much feminine passivity. I’m interested to see how her character grows.
But this kind of real life attitude makes me wonder about how he views his own show. It makes me wonder if he thinks the hero is not the person everyone else thinks the hero is.
(Though I have to say that thing where the 2 black people in the office only exchange banter with each other, old after 1 episode.)
PeakVT
Sorry for the OT, but Katherine Eban, the author of the F&F story in Fortune, is on OnPoint right now, and the host is having a hard time getting his head around the idea the whole controversy is bullshit. It’s kinda funny.
shortstop
@DougJ: Probably not, but as misogyny goes, that’s pretty mild. It seems more like he’s going to be a jerk in general, and that happened to be the particular jerky thing that came into his head at that moment.
shortstop
@MikeJ: We call it the Woody Allen rule around here. The only way to view art is outside the personality of the artist, or we’d never get any.
burnspbesq
I suppose that it’s theoretically possible that you could find something less relevant to write about, but you would have to search long and hard to find it.
Meanwhile, here’s something that’s actually relevant to real people’s lives.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/gay-marriage-issue-reaches-court/#more-148247
kindness
Sooo, Aaron is an asshole. Yea, OK. Still, I like most his work.
I long ago let go of the idea that I’m supposed to actually like and or respect sports heros, politicians, writers or religions persons. It would be nice, but my world would suck if it was manditory.
RossInDetroit
Data point: Aaron Sorkin apparently dated MoDo. There was a bit of mild hilarity that I missed where she mistakenly sent ‘racy’ emails intended for him to Andrew Ross Sorkin instead.
Heh.
Joel
Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino can eat bowls of dicks as far as I’m concerned. I like ther movies less than most, so there’s that, too.
iLarynx
I just read her article and I disagree with the misogynistic comment. I think SHE comes off a bit jerky, and quite hyper-defensive. She assumes his question “…did you not understand it?” was a condescending remark when I saw it as merely asking how she interpreted the show (the same piece of music, art, literature, etc., can be interpreted differently by different individuals). Either way though, she immediately takes it as a personal affront and attributes it to Sorkin’s “huge hubris.” I suspect her attitude was showing through which is probably why Sorkin decided to just laugh off the end of the “interview” with a fashion writer. Maybe Sorkin is a jerk, but it also looks like Sarah Prickett is best suited to writing about lapels and hem lines.
quannlace
\And I’m sick of the Aaron Sorkin trademark, ‘two people walking fast down a hallway and talking rapid fire at each other,’ shot.
shortstop
@quannlace: That got old decades ago.
Mnemosyne
@DougJ:
Of course he would — he’s showing that he’s the Hollywood Alpha Male, where you demonstrate how much power you have by being a douchebag to people who have to grin and take it.
There are very few industries where you can get away with literally being a screaming asshole to the people you work with, but Hollywood is one of them.
General Stuck
From our totally fucked up shit files
Quiz – who is that and what is he doing. Hint – youthful photo of a now elected official in the senate
horatius
@burnspbesq: Ah, the good old diversion tactic. Why are you not blogging about Y instead of bitching about X?
Why didn’t we all think of that?
horatius
@Mnemosyne: And every corporate boardroom in the country.
EconWatcher
OT, but it sounds like one or more conservative justices have been leaking stories to the press to imply that Roberts buckled to liberal pressure–that Roberts voted as he did because he concluded from press stories that striking down the law would be viewed as illegitimate. If these leaks occurred, they are very slimy and break with very longstanding Court norms of civility.
I’m telling you, if the wingnuts go too far in trying to slime Roberts, you never know how far the guy might evolve. This personal stuff really can influence outcomes. It has happened on the Court any number of times before, most notably with Blackmun.
The justices live in a very confined and suffocating little bubble, and festering personal animosities in there can be a very big deal. Let’s watch.
shortstop
@EconWatcher: Along those lines, I’ve been wondering if Kennedy’s reported rage at Roberts might play out badly in marriage equality cases. Kennedy’s past opinions have been mostly gay-friendly, but we saw in the ACA ruling how little precedence mattered and how capable at least four justices are of writing a snitty tantrumy opinion that completely ignores the constitution. Roberts is not likely to opine on the side of the angels this time.
burnspbesq
@horatius:
I’m sorry, are you actually suggesting that Aaron Sorkin’s personality disorders are more important than the beginning of the Supreme Court’s review of the Constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act? Please clarify.
Mnemosyne
@horatius:
Physical violence would get you fired from most corporate boardrooms, but it’s very common in Hollywood. When was the last time you heard about, say, Bill Gates punching a wall and the board members framing it for him?
shortstop
@burnspbesq: I think his point was more that this thread is about towering assholes, and that your contribution is in keeping with the general theme. Do you ever walk into a thread, a room, etc. without starting off with gratuitous rudeness that makes you look foolish?
WereBear
Yeah, so a BSD in a BSD dominated industry is a BSD. Color me surprised.
I watched both episodes of the new show on HBO yesterday, and I have to say that his shows are always interesting, and I do miss dialogue as a regular thing. It’s a rare art and I’m glad to hear real actors say realish things and get to react to what each other say.
I don’t know why it’s so difficult to find when it’s about 75% of what drama is, but there you go.
EconWatcher
@shortstop:
Based on his dazzling opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, I think Kennedy is a safe vote for marriage equality. So Roberts’ vote, whatever it might be, will not be needed, as long as all the liberals are on board–and I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t be.
scav
@burnspbesq: I think he was gently suggesting you ain’t da boss and many people like a bit of chocolate or wee-tiny bit of dried fruit in their burnsie-approved-diet-of-unrelenting-musli-of-which-burnsie-is-self-appointed-master-of-relevance.
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
I honestly can’t tell what’s going on in that picture.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
I wonder what went wrong with young Rand. He seems to be a non-asshole in that picture.
aimai
I read the whole article and I thought it was just a great essay, as essay, and also a great “interview” of a person (Sorkin) who was giving a press conference in order to pimp his work while acting as though he were too good to interact with the plebes questioning him. The entirety of his remarks to her were pretty standard old man/young woman flippant take downs. The “High five” comment at the end was actually his attempt to be conciliating and, in his mind, charming, by condescending to treat her as a toy and a pet instead of merely trying to (as he saw it) humiliate her and take her down a peg. She was actually attempting, in her question, to engage with him as a writer/director and a political and cultural figure. He came out of the gate attacking her as pretentious, uninformed, and unimportant. Let this be a reminder to old farts never to pick a quarrel with someone who buys ink by the barrell or, in this case, the pixel.
aimai
shortstop
@WereBear: Yeah, seems the script is almost always the weakest link in any production now. I can’t begin to count the number of shows and movies that have disappointed me because the cinematography, sets, costumes, score, etc. were excellent and the dialogue was mediocre to atrocious.
shortstop
@EconWatcher: Sincerely hope you’re right. I’d known that the right wing of the court was capable of rank partisanship, but all this personal venom now being publicly and semipublicly aired is worrisome.
bjacques
@General Stuck: At first I would have said “Jeffrey Dahmer.” On second look, Mitch McConnell sexing a chicken?
[ETA: At least I got the state right. What about the chicken?]
That kind of behavior does erode one’s admiration for the person. Funnily enough, I got into a discussion with someone who proudly (!) remembered when they started hating the Dixie Chicks and made a point of still hating them today, eight years later. Yup, that.
Authoritarian types switch quickly from idolizing a person to trashing him or her. For everyone else, it’s more of a process of erosion. It takes a pattern of disappointing behavior before one finally has enough, and simply walks away. If said annoying idol is, say, a musician, movie star or writer, you can still enjoy the back catalogue and remember when he or she didn’t yet suck.
burnspbesq
@shortstop:
The DOMA cases are going to be the ultimate in legal inside baseball, because a preliminary issue that most non-lawyers either don’t get or don’t think should be important (the standard of review) is going to be outcome-determinative. Even the lower court judges that have declared Section 3 unconstitutional have candidly admitted that if the appropriate standard of review is rational basis, Section 3 stands. Loony-tunes like our genial host, who have convinced themselves (in the face of 223 years of contrary evidence) that judging is an inherently political act and legal reasoning is just smoke and mirrors, are going to go nucking futs if it comes out that way.
General Stuck
@EconWatcher:
Well, the actual supreme court justices are not the only people that work in that building. there are clerks and others, and like every place of work, there is scuttlebut galore, I would think. I can’t really get my head wrapped around the idea that one of the justices is leaking to the press, from a bunch that would ‘have teevee cameras in oral arguments, over their dead bodies”. And I doubt that anyone other than the justices themselves are privy to their private meeting they have to twist arms and call in favors, or the equivalent. Scuttlebut can sometimes be accurate, in a broad sense, but it is easy to miss the trees for the forest.
MikeJ
@WereBear:
Drama on TV means gunfire, or fx shots of labs after guns have been fired.
Hill Dweller
Sorkin was probably high during the interview. I’m not joking. The guy has a reputation for snorting more coke than some small countries. I’ve seen his appearances on both Fallon and Colbert recently, where he had the flop sweat going before the interview even started.
General Stuck
@bjacques:
Cat
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: Scalia will argue that gay people weren’t mentioned in Carolene Products so fuck ’em.
You don’t have to know anything at all about the law to know which way most of the justices will vote. That’s because the Supreme Court isn’t a legal body, it is a political body.
scav
@WereBear: Maybe that lies behind my current reliance of radio-drama from the bbc. Some of it’s dreck but they certainly can’t go the throw up a scenic background and no-one will notice the utter absence of script approach.
Zandar
“Everyone’s talking about this Aaron Sorkin story”
Umm…no.
EconWatcher
@General Stuck:
Ordinarily, it would indeed be very shocking that justices themselves might be leaking. But Scalia has been acting kind of unhinged lately. I’d peg him as the most likely leaker. I say that as someone who used to have quite a bit of respect for Scalia as a thinker and writer (way back when).
On Burnsie’s point about standard of review, I would remind folks that Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws, was decided on the “rational basis” standard of review. In other words, a majority (led very eloquently by Kennedy) decided that, even giving legislation the most deference possible through the standard of review, the government failed to show even a simple “rational basis” for sodomy laws.
In dissent in the case, Scalia very presciently complained that if states could not claim a rational basis for sodomy laws, they would not be able to claim a rational basis to ban gay marriage. I think he was right then, and I think that’s just how it will play out now, with Kennedy leading a majority.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
Aww, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for Cole’s bullshit. You’re smarter than that.
shortstop
@burnspbesq:
The genial host to whom you still haven’t acknowledged your enormous error in insisting to the end that the ACA decision would come down 8-1 or 7-2 for, because rank partisanship would absolutely, positively be restricted to one or two outliers? The host you told you’d eat crow if it only went through 5-4? That host?
This pathological inability to ever admit a mistake has got to explain your continuing career troubles.
If, after last week, you can still argue that nearly half of this court is incapable of making judging an inherently political act outside of legal reasoning, your credibility is even lower here than it has been. Doubling down on stupidity…yet again.
In the coming days, I look forward to more thoughts on this case from our many attorneys-commenters who possess both competence and ethics.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
You can’t explain Bush V. Gore any other way than as politics gone mad. And you can’t explain Scalia’s various flip flops on precedent and his own prior decisions as anything other than politics gone mad. But that’s not really anything new–legal scholars have acknowledged the role politics, class, and culture play in legal interpretation for years. They even teach it in law schools. Incredible!
aimai
Southern Beale
Unrelated except in the douchery department: George W. Bush is touring Botswana and Zambia this week,
Let’s take a moment and remember all of the women in America who cannot get cervical cancer prevention and treatment programs in his home state of Texas, thanks to Republican douchebaggery like shutting down women’s healthcare clinics because the Texas GOP is “pro life.” And not to mention all of the other healthcare crap going on right now.
George W. Bush. I send a heart fuck you to you, sir.
Violet
@General Stuck: He’s dissecting something in Biology class. I’m going to go with fetal pig. Is it Rand Paul?
Cacti
@EconWatcher:
I’d imagaine that the leaks are sour grapes from Kennedy. Roberts stole his thunder and usurped his place as the “swing vote” on all of the big decisions.
Zagloba
Off-topic, but Anderson Cooper came out to Andrew Sullivan this morning.
EconWatcher
@aimai:
I’m a lawyer, although certainly not a constitutional scholar. What I found most striking about the dissenters in the ACA case was that they were willing to let labels control a constitutional outcome: Congress didn’t label the mandate a tax, so we won’t uphold it as a tax.
That is contrary to some very basic, longstanding principles of constitutional law, which those dissenters themselves have invoked in numerous prior rulings: Congressional statutues are entitled to a presumption of constitutionality. Laws of Congress are to be construed, where reasonably possible, as constitutional. Substance should prevail over form. Never before, to my knowledge, has the Court suggested that Congress must correctly cite the power it is using in order for its law to be upheld, if Congress has the power.
So yes, I think the dissenters were partisan and lawless. I think Roberts knew it, and that’s why, in the end, he couldn’t go along. But one more vote would have made the difference. So people who treat the Court as sometimes a political body are more right than wrong (although I do think that can be overstated).
General Stuck
@EconWatcher:
I think DOMA will be upheld, and the VRA is toast, or gutted with the DOJ review sections. Roe is in danger, for the reason Kennedy seems to have pitched his tent full time with the nutbags. I think when a case gets to the court, they will follow the wingnut 5 precedence, of money equals speech, and throw out any and all restrictions on campaign spending, including from the candidates themselves, and well as any other roadblock to the free speech highway they have paved with gold.
We won this huge battle over social programs and general welfare laws, but it likely will give Roberts cover to proceed unbound, on his mission to conservatize the country from the bench, and squeeze out every last vestige of liberalism that he and his henchman can possibly make happen. This was the first time Roberts sided with the libs in a 5/4 vote. And I bet it’s the last for some time to come. And even with his upholding the IM and ACA, he still couldn’t help himself for a little judicial rewrite of the law he said was constitutional. The guy is a full metal activist, and only not when the consequences are at their zenith, like the ACA. And now Kennedy seems firmly in his spell, and the others sleep in caskets when the sun goes down. That is what I think. Unless dems hold the oval office, and one of them croaks, drowning in their own bile.
rlrr
@Zagloba:
To the surprise of who?
iLarynx
@aimai: Oh, yes. I’m sure Sorkin will rue the day he decided to tangle with Sarah Prickett. She’ll have the last laugh as in five years we’ll all be discussing the art of Ms. Prickett and asking “Who the hell is Aaron Sorkin?”
General Stuck
@Violet:
It’s Rand, and he is dissecting a Cat/
iLarynx
@iLarynx: /snark
Chyron HR
@burnspbesq:
Hey, it’s the nation’s foremost Constitutional scholar, Burns’ Lawyer.
Are you going to make another hilariously incorrect prediction about this case, the way you spent months screaming that the Obamacare case would be decided 7-2 and condescendingly declaring that anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand that the Roberts court is a bastion of jurisprudence? Because that never gets old.
SectarianSofa
What the fuck? I don’t understand enough of this without following the link to figure this out, and based on the excerpt, I’m not following the link.
Violet
@General Stuck: Well, I got the dissecting part right. And the Rand Paul part right. Who dissected a cat in school? We did frogs and fetal pigs.
shortstop
@EconWatcher:
It absolutely can be overstated, which is why when I point out the court’s politicization–based not on my layperson’s gut but on actual attorneys’ dissections of the unconstitutionality of opinions like the ACA dissent–I stick to talking about a hefty portion of the court having clearly demonstrated its ability to act solely as partisans.
I sympathize with the frustration of good-faith attorney-commenters who keep hearing remarks about the court being all political, all the time. But the solution to that is not to pretend that the SCOTUS right wing’s politicization does not represent massive and worrisome corruption on the nation’s highest court, corruption that throws off previously supportable assumptions about the future behavior of some of the justices. This is where rational and reasonable analysis like yours and that of many other of our attorneys here is so vital to our understanding of the situation.
Gin & Tonic
@Zagloba: Holy cow! Next you’ll be telling us that Elton John is gay.
Cacti
@Chyron HR:
I’m surprised burnsie still shows his face around here, after Scalia’s spit-flecked political rant from the bench about immigration policy.
Litlebritdifrnt
Remember the superstar from CPAC several years ago who was hailed as a potential Republican leader of the future Jonathan Krohn? Guess what he is no longer a conservative and would probably vote for Obama.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78068.html
MikeJ
@EconWatcher:
As one of the people doing the overstating, I would agree. But the internet was made for hyperbole. And cats.
SectarianSofa
@quannlace:
Parodied well in _Brazil_ . It’s at least that old.
Pat
Farking hell…
Look, the question that preceded Sorkin’s offending response was “why don’t you make a show about something people still read, like Gawker?” And people are supposed to be surprised that Gawker harrumphed that Sorkin would ridicule such silliness?
Sorkin didn’t exactly acquit himself with his rejoinder, but that woman was a twit. And you are making common cause with stupidity. If you’re going to treat all of the Internet as your tribe, you’re going to have some very embarrassing cousins….
Someguy
Sorkin may be a jerk, but Democratic politicians ought to use his mannerisms and attitude as a model for how to treat Republicans. We’d be a better nation for it.
Rafer Janders
@burnspbesq:
You know, you’re always free to start your own blog in which you can address issues of towering importance. I’m sure you’d get ones of readers.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I guess I can understand people who don’t like Sorkin’s particular dialogue-writing style, but complaining that his characters don’t talk like “real” people is silly. Frankly, the worst dialogue is when it sounds like real people talk, because the way real people talk is boring.
Anyone who thinks that the dialogue on “The Wire” was not equally as crafted and stylized as what Sorkin writes needs to learn a little bit about screenwriting.
(Though I do get what people mean when they say Sorkin relies too much on dialogue. That’s his stage background coming through — Mamet is often the same way.)
scav
Burnsie’s got stick-to-it-ness trained under the Catholics. He’s not going to let a little 5-4 evidence get in the way. Speaking of a different case, this one at least made me laugh:
Apple’s patent absurdity exposed at last
US appeal court judge Richard Posner has finally said the unsayable: that Apple’s and other tech firms’ patent battles are a ridiculous abuse of intellectual property law
Opinion from the Guard so not offered up as anything near the end word. Still makes me snortle to think of a judge assigning the patent to “1” to one litigant, the patent to “0” to another and putting them in a dark room to figure it out.
SectarianSofa
@burnspbesq:
Blogs. How do they work?
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Aww…that’s great. He sounds like a smart, thoughtful kid. Good for him.
General Stuck
@Violet:
Texans
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet: I loved his reasoning that once he got more “thoughtful” he switched sides. That really puts the shiv in between the shoulder blades, although I do not think that was his intention.
Nina
Sorkin came off more as an age-ist than a misogynist in that bit, at least to me. He probably would not have done that to a woman of his own age, whereas he probably would have been almost as snotty to a young-looking man asking similar questions.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Yeah, it does. And he repeats several times how he was just parroting what he heard around him, and once he thought about it realized he didn’t agree with it. No wonder the Texas GOP wants to eliminate critical thinking.
scav
@Litlebritdifrnt: He certainly mentioned a rather longer list of philosophers too — he may be slightly good at the shiv, meaning it or not.
Mino
@Litlebritdifrnt: He, he. If that Georgia lad had been edumacated in Texas, he’d never have aquired critical thinking skills. We’da seen to that.
Mino
@General Stuck: I never!
General Stuck
@Mino:
At least one does.
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: Kid’s only 17, so I’ll let it slide, but grouping Wittgenstein with Nietzsche and Kant, and calling the three of them “German philosphers” — kid needs to read and understand more. Those are the words of someone who has read little but wants to sound important.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, the dialogue on “The Wire” was equally crafted, but it was crafted so that it sounded like real people talking. Sorkin’s dialogue is crafted so that it sounds like Aaron Sorkin characters talking. The trick to writing good dialogue is to make the audience forget, in some ways, that they’re hearing good dialogue, and rather make them believe that they’re hearing real dialogue.
RossInDetroit
@Zagloba:
Anderson Cooper needed to tell Andrew Sullivan that he was gay? Where’s Sully been, Mars?
This is two kinds of non-news:
A) everyone knew.
B) nobody cared.
RossInDetroit
@Violet:
My wife did. When they were done they mounted the skeleton in a jazz dance pose with a cigarette and a tiny martini glass. The base of this assemblage bore a Latin inscription which translated as “Happiness is a Tight Pussy”. She and her gay lab partner Jimmy did that.
RossInDetroit
I just discovered a synonym for cat that FYWP doesn’t like. Dammit, I was talking about a cat.
SectarianSofa
@Gin & Tonic:
Actually, he said “Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, _Kant and lots of other German philosophers_”. Kant is not German? And all have connections to the German language.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
I give you Meg Whitman shoving a female eBay staffer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/us/politics/15whitman.html
And now she’s licking her wounds by firing thousands at HP.
Shalimar
@burnspbesq: I think he is suggesting that you could have posted your off-topic link without going out of your way to shit the thread first.
SectarianSofa
@Violet: “No wonder the Texas GOP wants to eliminate critical thinking.”
I think the Texas GOP _has_ eliminated critical thinking. They’re now trying to push the same on the rest of us.
aimai
I think these “who does she think she is” comments really reflect exactly the attitude that Sorkin has which is that he bemoans an era (the ’40s) when (he thinks) heroic acts of modernist vision like his TV script writing would have been hymned by more important people (older, white males? Educated people) than some little bimbo who has “never seen a movie or read a newspaper.”
Her question about Gawker wasn’t silly or dismissive or even rah rah internety–its the same question that gets asked of any artist when their focus or their medium starts to get stale. Have you thought about updating your shtick? Have you thought about preaching to someone outside your choir? Does your viewpoint translate into other languages, media, cultures? HIs response was not as thoughtful as her question or her essay.
She was there doing her job, and he was there preening and posing for an imaginary audience of trained seals. I know people loved the West Wing–I found it stagy and uninteresting–but its not really “one for the ages.” In fact I doubt very much that people will still be talking about Sorkin in five or ten years. I’m sure there will be someone new doing something else new. Just as they are about Mamet (good point upthread whoever brought him up). I loved Mamet’s work for a long time but he jumped the shark politically and aesthetically quite a while ago.
aimai
Gin & Tonic
@SectarianSofa: Wittgenstein was Austrian, not German, and was in the British analytic school — by no stretch a “German philospher.” He spent his career writing on very different issues than Nietzsche and Kant.
Rafer Janders
@burnspbesq:
Yes. That is exactly what he is suggesting. How could it be read any other way? Once again you do not fail to grasp what is being said to you.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Heck, even a monster movie like The Thing from Another Planet has marvelous dialogue.
(Not the only reason I love that movie, mind you.)
I would agree with you about The Wire and mention NYPD Blue as another who actually cared to have the characters say things to each other.
I think a lot of suits figure it doesn’t matter, because atrociously written movies can do well at the box office; but I always figure you up your odds if it is done well, so why not?
The screenwriter is usually the cheapest line on the budget!
Southern Beale
Has everyone read Amber Waves Of Grain over at Esquire? A look at income inequality in America, author interviews six people at different income brackets, from a guy making just $200 week to a bazillionaire?
Incredible story. Everyone should read it. It’s long, 6 pages, but damn. I’m still hashing over some of the stuff. Amazing …
SectarianSofa
@Gin & Tonic: That’s why I italicized “Kant and other German philosopher”. It’s a list, man. It’s ambiguous. Also, you’ll need to fix the Wikipedia article on German philosophy:
“German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Søren Kierkegaard (a Danish philosopher) is frequently included in surveys of German (or Germanic) philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.”
(Citations are decent.)
Why you hatin’?
Violet
@Gin & Tonic:
It depends how you read it. He said:
He could have meant “Kant and other German philosophers.” Kant is German. The previous philosophers may or may not have been German, but that isn’t relevant. It might just have been an awkwardly worded sentence. Or he might not have realized the ones he mentioned weren’t all German.
Rafer Janders
@Gin & Tonic:
No, by several stretches. The camp of “German philosophers” (as also German writers, musicians, etc.) can stretch to include Austrians, Swiss, or anyone else who primarily thinks and writes in German (including ethnic Germans in all the countries of Eastern Europe).
Austrians are “Germans” in many important ethno-linguistic-cultural senses. The main distinction between “Austrian” and “German” only arose in the late 19th century, when Bismarck managed to create a German empire under the rule of the kings of Prussia, and the Austro-Hungarian empire thereafter was set on a more eastern path.
Steve in DC
@aimai:
Personally I have always got the impression that West Wing is less important for it’s quality as a series than for it’s outsized cultural impact among young liberals and DC Beltway centrist types.
If you wanted to see good in our leaders and that they were failed humans instead of gigantic jackasses The West Wing was functional escapism. It also had a “liberal” president with traditional Burkean “conservative” qualities for centrist types to wank over. And if you were young and stupid enough you might have thought one day our politics could be like that.
The thing is though, it’s fiction. And once you realize that it’s utter bullshit and that our politics has never operated like that it seems nothing more than the fantasy of egotistical jackass, and the entire thing falls apart. But outside of David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, and liberal poly-sci majors in urban cities, everybody else realized it was bullshit.
WereBear
@Gin & Tonic: Geez, the kid realized he’d been brainwashed and starting reading philosphy; and he’s only 17!
I’d buy him dinner.
General Stuck
OT
hahahahaha
Back to the drawing board, wingnuts
Like i figured, big yawn from public, with a now what are going to do about the economy, stupid?
Joel
@quannlace: I’m giving the Newsroom a chance, after being super-excited before the premiere and a little disappointed after. The thing that gets me about Sorkin is the whole “talking at people” instead of natural dialogue. It feels extremely archaic, especially after Davids Chase and Simon changed the way television shows are made.
Mister Papercut
@Violet:
I did, as a sophomore in high school. (It was for AP Biology/Human Anatomy, though.)
Rafer Janders
@Violet:
It’s also casually spoken, and not written, speech, and therefore almost necessarily more imprecise.
Gin & Tonic
@SectarianSofa: Not hatin’, just suggesting that the kid needs to read more. Remember the line about Gingrich (remember him?) that he’s a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like? That list the kid rattled off sounds like somebody who has skimmed a bit and is trying to sound more impressive than his actual reading would indicate. But as I sad at the outset, he’s only 17, so whatevs.
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: I blame the absence of the Oxford comma. Which we can all blame Politico for.
Pat
Aimai, I appreciate you actually being on-point, but c’mon. Gawker is hideously trivial, and the question was entirely extraneous. Whatever you think of Sorkin’s project, he’s clearly convinced that serious news reporting is (a) important and (b) something there’s just no room for in present-day media. Anyone who asks “well, why don’t you do something about flippant hipsters chasing the hot topic of the past eight hours across the internet?” pretty clearly hasn’t internalized the premise.
WereBear
@Joel: Mr WereBear & I are big Jeff Daniels fans; he never gets enough credit, despite his quality and versatility.
The Crossing was something he really shone in.
Goblue72
@Mister Papercut: Same here – sophomore HS (late 1980’s) AP human anatomy classes would dissect cats by the bucketful. I couldn’t deal so opted for the 2 year Chem AP track. Would have rather dissected a cat in retrospect.
gelfling545
Why to we continue to cherish the notion that because one has a talent, even a great talent, one is necessarily an admirable human being? It would seem to me that those who have nurtured a particular talent to success or even greatness may have had to do so at the expense of developing certain social skills.
Ruckus
I thought Mr. Burns was a rich asshole that Bart’s dad worked for. I don’t recall him being a constitutional scholar.
SectarianSofa
@Rafer Janders:
Right — the only source I have at hand _The Oxford Companion to Philosophy_ doesn’t even bother to argue the shared heritage of Austrians and ‘Germans’.
Interesting:
“[Contra the medieval tradition of Latin-language philosophy,] many of the philosophers who wrote in German were very conscious of the fact, and emphasized and exploited the philosophical resources of German.”
And, “…analytical philosophy prospers in Germany, especially under the influence of the Vienna Circle, Popper , Wittgenstein , and Anglo-American philosophers, but utilizing also the fertile resources of the German heritage.”
Rafer Janders
@Rafer Janders:
To simplify what I wrote above, until the 19h century, there was no country known as “Germany”, though there was a concept of a German people (basically, everyone who spoke German), and instead were many separate political groupings consisting of Saxons, Bavarians, Hessians, Austrians, Westphalians, Baden-Wurtembergers, Prussians, etc.
Then in the 19th century, all of those groups but the Austrians came together in a nation that came to be known as Germany. So the German-Austrian distinction is really more of a political one that it is an ethnic-linguistic-cultural one. Austrians are “Germans” in terms of their language, ethnicity, culture, history, etc., but not in terms of their political nationality.
NonyNony
@Rafer Janders:
I disagree with this entirely.
The trick to writing good dialogue is to write dialogue that entertains the audience.
Your dialogue can sound completely crafted and artificial, or it can sound just like two guys you overhear on the street chatting, or it can be written in iambic pentameter and it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is whether or not people are entertained by what they hear in your dialogue. If you’ve got that you’re golden. If you don’t have that it doesn’t matter how good your craft is or how “real” the dialogue sounds if you don’t remember why you’re writing the dialogue.
SectarianSofa
@Gin & Tonic: Ok, I’m with you. Something about philosophy makes people more persnickety (me, e.g.). But the speaker being 17 should trump most things.
Gin & Tonic
@Rafer Janders: I wouldn’t presume to guess what language Wittgenstein thought in, but he received his doctorate from, and spent the rest of his career teaching in, Cambridge. England. The only major work he published in his lifetime was indeed in German, but he was a “British philospher,” if you are to assign him to such a grouping.
jeffreyw
@NonyNony:
See also: Deadwood
Rafer Janders
@Gin & Tonic:
So, as you note, he’s basically exactly the same as every single 17 year old who’s ever existed.
ShadeTail
@burnspbesq:
You know, I’d tell you to fuck off, but your craptastic ravings are really entertaining. You are so full of shit and so empty of credibility that you acting all important and informed is really quite hilarious.
BTW, remind me, what vote to uphold the ACA did you predict? And how correct were you?
Oh, and like it or not, asswipe, this Arron Sorkin idiocy *is* relevant to some people’s lives. Not particularly to mine, but hey, all work and no play, etc.
SectarianSofa
@Gin & Tonic: Wittgenstein thought in Orcish, like most philosophers of standing.
Rafer Janders
Considering Wittgenstein was born and raised in Austria, and didn’t move permanently to England until he was in his early forties, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he thought in German, as I don’t know too many people who change the language they think in while in middle age.
Hypatia's Momma
@gelfling545:
“It’s just how Hollywood people are.”
“It’s just the Internet.”
“Men are just like that.”
“Boys will be boy!”
(I’ve only seen/heard “Hollywood people” line only in context with Hollywood men being abusive assholes but I’ll assume it’s also directed at women who routinely have violent physical outbursts and/or are routinely racist and sexist.)
Rafer Janders
@NonyNony:
Yes, but…I was talking about writing characters for television in situations that are supposed to pass for real life (the White House, the Baltimore docks, a CNN type newsroom). All those shows are designed to make us feel that we are getting a look at something authentic, at real life as it is currently lived.
I agree that you can write wonderful dialogue in iambic pentameter, but if you had your characters speak that way on either The West Wing or The Wire, it would remove, perhaps a little bit, any sense of verismilitude….
Rafer Janders
@NonyNony:
Sure, it has to be entertaining. But when I watch a Sorkin show I’m entertained by Sorkin’s writing. When I watch The Wire I’m entertained by the characters’ talking to each other. It creates two entirely different reactions in me. If what Sorkin wants is to create an entertaining show, then he’s done that, but he’s never let me forget that I’m watching a show. As someone else noted above, it always seems more like a play, more stagey, than like real life.
sb
An artist acted like an asshole? Stop the fucking presses.
burnspbesq
@shortstop:
Got a link?
burnspbesq
@aimai:
Nor have I tried to. That’s the outlier.
burnspbesq
@Chyron HR:
I got the outcome right. Can you say the same, jackass?
burnspbesq
@Rafer Janders:
I’m sorry, is the concept of the “rhetorical question” unfamiliar to you?
iLarynx
I don’t feel obliged to defend a particular person or a gender (or a generation for that matter). All I know of Sorkin is 1 episode of West Wing (not impressed), The Social Network (good, but not great), and his recent appearance on Colbert. My observations weren’t coloured by whatever of Sorkin’s foibles may have shown up in gossip tabloids like Gawker. The fashion columnist’s question of Gawker was a dumb one. She may not be dumb herself, but that was a dumb question. She might as well have asked about The National Enquirer. Who the hell takes Gawker or The National Enquirer seriously? Apparently Sarah Prickett did and it betrayed either a lack of seriousness, or an abundance of ignorance on her part.
Sorkin may well be a jerk (don’t really know, don’t really care), but Sarah Prickett did come across as out of her element and, as someone else has already noted, a twit.
The point being that it seems a bit hypocritical to say “Sorkin’s a jerk, a world-renowned jerk, a hubris-spewing jerk to everyone” and then claim that the only reason he was a jerk to Sarah is “because she’s a girl.”
burnspbesq
@ShadeTail:
See comment 133.
sb
@iLarynx: Damn, I wish I would have written that.
AA+ Bonds
West Wing is 24 for liberals
Shitty trite fantasy dialogue does not get any better even if people are cutting each other off to deliver it
EconWatcher
@burnspbesq:
Mr. Burns, I think you’d have to concede that the Court is more politicized than you thought it was. Kennedy joined a four-vote disssent, which almost carried the day, based on some really shoddy reasoning that doesn’t square at all well with prior precedent.
Yes, Roberts saved the day, and so rendered your predicted outcome correct. But did you ever in a million years think that Kennedy would jump on to the wingnut wagon the way he did here? You did not, and that’s because you underestimated the politicization of the conservatives on the Court.
Yes, the folks here who treat the Court as nothing but political are mistaken. But it’s no longer tenable to say that justices like Kennedy and Scalia only went off the reservation once, with Bush v. Gore. I wish that were true, but plainly it is not. I would suggest that your comments will be more interesting when you confront that reality.
ShadeTail
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, the comment where you lied about getting it right. You predicted it would sail through at least 7 to 2, and it nearly got overturned 5 to 4. It only squeaked though when Roberts of all people defected for the one vote we needed. So unlike the people (like me) who predicted it would be a very close politicized decision either way, you were utterly wrong. As you always are.
Please, keep embarrassing yourself by tooting your horn about how great you really aren’t, because as I said, you are very entertaining. :)
AA+ Bonds
I have a dream, that one day Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon will embrace at the top of Burj Khalifa, and as they slowly meld together and become indistinguishable to the human eye, they throw themselves off
Rafer Janders
@RossInDetroit:
I would like to marry your wife if that’s OK with you.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Not really. It was crafted to sound like people would like to think they sound when they talk. It’s just as much of an illusion as Sorkin’s dialogue. Or, for that matter, Wilder’s or Sturges’s or Welles’s or Coppola’s or Scorsese’s or … you get the idea.
It’s really a matter of taste, so if you don’t like Sorkin’s style, it’s not a big deal. But when Frank Pembleton spoke on “Homicide,” it was no more realistic than when Sorkin’s characters speak.
Weirdly, I think a big part of the problem with Sorkin is that he writes all of the teleplays for his shows himself, so everyone ends up sounding alike. With most TV shows, there’s a staff of writers and, while everyone writes the same “voice” for each character, you’re still going to get some variety in what characters do/say based on who the writer is that week. Having a single writer writing in a single voice works fine for a feature film, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to pull off week after week over the course of a TV series.
AA+ Bonds
To wrap it up, Aaron Sorkin is the authoritarian personality’s David Milch, which is more or less what this article says
Mnemosyne
The line of dialogue that made me a devoted fan of “Homicide,” David Simon, and Andre Braugher:
“You know how there are three kinds of Jews, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox? Well, there are two kinds of Catholics — devout and fallen.”
Nobody talks like that, but damn did it work for that character.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, Sorkin and Coppola, two peas in a pod :/
AA+ Bonds
The difference to me between Sorkin and Milch is that when I heard an audio clip of Deadwood on the radio it had a long pause and a sharp inhalation in it and it made me want to watch the show instantly, but whenever I hear a clip of one of Sorkin’s shows on the radio it’s like no one ever has to breathe in, much less consider what they’re saying
In the garden patch of television where Milch carefully cultivates dread and doubt, Sorkin spurts verbal urine like a leaky dick
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Never met David Milch, have you? I have. If you think he’s any less of an arrogant asshole than Sorkin, I’m afraid I’ll have to disillusion you.
EconWatcher
@Mnemosyne:
Plus, Milch plagiarized Deadwood from a novel of the same name by the great writer Pete Dexter.
MBunge
@Mnemosyne: “Weirdly, I think a big part of the problem with Sorkin is that he writes all of the teleplays for his shows himself, so everyone ends up sounding alike.”
It has nothing to do with the amount he writes. That’s just the way he writes. Everybody sounds like everybody else and every conservation sounds like every other. I mean, Woody Allen has a wider variety of characters and voices than Sorkin.
Mike
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I actually do know some people who talk like that. Not all the time and sometimes they step on their tongues but still.
I think part of the reason actors don’t sound like real people is that actors get multiple tries to craft what we see. They practice their lines and have directors and writers watching to correct their delivery. We get to step on our tongues(hoof in mouth disease), so few of us ever sound like actors.
MBunge
@AA+ Bonds: “The difference to me between Sorkin and Milch is that when I heard an audio clip of Deadwood on the radio it had a long pause and a sharp inhalation in it and it made me want to watch the show instantly”
And that’s what drives people in the entertainment business crazy. A “long pause and a sharp inhalation”? That’s what piqued your interest?
Mike
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher: I’ll have to admit that the right side of the Courtis more politicized than I expected. I have been thinking about Kennedy. On big decisions since Bush v. Gore, he has largely gone to the right. I think the idea that he is a swing Justice in the mold of O’C is mistaken. Outside of a couple of issues, he is of the right. All this being said, I do not buy into the idea that the Court has become an entirely political entity. The growing perception that it has, though, is dangerous to the Court’s legitimacy as an institution.
EconWatcher
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agree on all points. Kennedy is now a rightist who happens not to hate gay people.
I think it can’t be overstated how much of a pickle Scalia is creating for Roberts through his rantings. That attack on Obama over immigration was just off the charts. I can’t remember anything like that from a justice in my lifetime.
Roberts has to care about the Court’s appearance of impartiality and judiciousness. Nino sure ain’t helping.
AA+ Bonds
@MBunge:
Yeah, you don’t have to tell me that a lot of Americans are absolutely repulsed and mystified by the use of silence.
It’s how Sorkin makes his dime, by allowing slack-jawed, self-loathing viewers to coast through episode after episode without ever having to be alone with their inner life, or to contemplate those of the characters.
I suggest you ease into scary ol’ culture with a little subtitled Kurosawa. Tell me how it goes.
Mnemosyne
@MBunge:
Meh. I don’t think that, say, Sorkin’s Mark Zuckerberg and Will McAvoy sound exactly alike. But I do think that Sorkin’s writing tics become much more obvious (and for many people, annoying) over the twelve hours of a TV season than they do over the course of a two-hour feature film.
The funny thing is, I’m not actually a big Sorkin fan. I’ve seen maybe a dozen episodes of “The West Wing” and most of “Studio 60” and that’s about it. I’m just defending against the notion that somehow he’s automatically a bad writer because the dialogue he writes is stylized in a specific way that some people find annoying.
@Ruckus:
Actually, one of the things that I find interesting in “The Newsroom” is that they actually bothered to figure out that news anchors and news readers have a very specific style in which they speak when they’re in front of the camera. If you ever watch any of the Onion’s “news” parodies, they do the same thing — a lot of the actors who do those Onion sketches are former small-market news people, so they know the “dialect.” Most movies and TV shows about TV get it wrong, so it’s nice to see that someone was thinking about it.
My all-time favorite fake Onion news show: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized? Spot. On.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Oh, sweetie. I was watching subtitled Kurosawa while you were still crapping your diapers. I have two film degrees and I work in the film industry. So maybe back off the pulpit, okay?
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
. . . . are you MBunge? Because that would be disappointing
Death Panel Truck
@Chyron HR: 7-2? Wow. My legal education is limited to one semester of Constitutional law at Central Washington University twenty years ago, and even I knew it would be 5-4. Unlike many here, I never doubted the ACA would be upheld. I was only wrong in believing Kennedy would be the deciding vote. I never dreamed it’d be Roberts.
AA+ Bonds
I don’t know which derail is more adorable, burns trying to use standard of review as an example of how Court decisions are free(!) of politics, or the folks trying to Wikipedia up whether the Tractatus or Philosophical Investigations was the ‘real’ Wittgenstein
AA+ Bonds
The fly is out of the bottle and now this thread has filled it with piss
Death Panel Truck
@trollhattan:
“Ms. Kim, who was not injured in the incident
Was. Not. Injured. equals 200 grand? Wow. I should have tried harder to provoke my right-wing boss at the last paper I worked at into shoving me. He wasn’t hurting for coin. ;)
AA+ Bonds
Anyway, MBunge makes my point as effectively as this story: Sorkin (and his thin characters) hail from a school of Americans who consider silence terrifying, who think no more than they say for fear of ‘inauthenticity’, and whose gaseous products dissipate on the wind like so many farts.
Sorkin can only ever write two characters: Blaaron Blorkin, who isn’t going to take it anymore! who is going to lay it down! cram the Real right up in your butthole! and Daaron Dorkin, the hyper-critical censor who wants Blaaron to rein in, hold back, consider this or that specific criticism. Either Blaaron is right because of his/her innate uncritical instinct, or Daaron is right because of his/her innate critical instinct. You’ll even see this in scenes where a lone character is talking to himself, or to God (and perhaps that’s where the vacuity of the exchange is presented with the most honesty).
It’s . . . an experience, it’s even exhilarating in rare moments, but it’s not substantive, and it’s in stark contrast to a writer like Milch, who forces the audience to participate in his work through smart use of ambiguity.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
No, but you seemed to be assuming that anyone who didn’t agree with you that Aaron Sorkin is the Worst Writer Ever must be doing it out of total ignorance of film and television history, so I answered.
I tend to like very stylized dialogue, so I like both Sorkin and Milch (though I like David Simon more than both of them combined).
Mnemosyne
Also, since I’m apparently in the mood to fight about TV today: Larry David, great TV writer or greatest TV writer ever?
A guy who can take 10 episodes to get to the punch line of his joke and make all 10 of those episodes interesting in themselves is someone who was born to write for TV, IMO.
“No way out. No way out. No way out.”
JenJen
Aaron Sorkin is a very talented complete misogynistic douchebag.
And, high fives are easy. The secret? Keep your eye on your high-fiving partner’s elbow, not their palm. Try it. Works every time.
shortstop
@burnspbesq: @burnspbesq: Never change, Burns. Sure, we wish you weren’t demonstrably emotionally unstable–for your sake–but since you continue to be thoroughly unaware of what a jackass you make of yourself in virtually every conversation, we guess you’re not hurting yourself (in this venue, anyway–real life is quite different), and the entertainment value for us is huge. I nominate “But I got the outcome right!” for a tag.
@EconWatcher: Exactly so.
@Rafer Janders: I would like to hang out with her, that’s for damn sure.
@EconWatcher: This reminds me–where did the nick Fat Tony originate? Nino’s always been his diminutive, if I may use that word without laughing.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
This is not a secret to anyone who’s been around TV newspeople. It’s taught to them in j-school – middle American English, down to which syllables to accent. It’s almost frightening the amount of packaged b.s. formula that is a basic American nightly local newscast.
SectarianSofa
@AA+ Bonds:
A debate about the real Wittgenstein, while potentially fascinating, is a debate I won’t be having. As I’ve fucking heard it before. Anyway, hate on wikipedia if you want — it’s often valuable, if only to point to other sources. (And many of the science, CS, technical articles are excellent jumping off points.) That, and you can fix or “fix” the entries if you’re so inclined.
MBunge
@AA+ Bonds: “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me that a lot of Americans are absolutely repulsed and mystified by the use of silence.”
Dude, when you say hearing a snippet of TV show dialog on the radio that contains a “long pause and a sharp inhalation” is all it takes to make that show must see TV, it’s not everybody else who has a weird attitude toward their entertainment. And I just watched and really enjoyed 13 Assassins last night.
Mike
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I once worked for a non profit that had a glossy monthly magazine in which the managing editor would edit everyone’s stories into his voice. The writers there long enough just learned to write like him. It wasn’t bad but everything read the same, as if one person wrote the whole thing with different bylines.
shortstop
I nominate “Butbutbut I got the outcome right!” for a tag.
Ruckus
@shortstop:
Great tag line but it can only be used when the story is about someone wearing blinders to their own world.
shortstop
@Ruckus: But we have plenty of them, don’t we? The entire GOP, plus Burns. Lots of stories.
Villago Delenda Est
@RossInDetroit:
Nice Steve Martin reference :)
300baud
@RossInDetroit:
That is beautiful. You should marry her again. Just to be safe.
Ruckus
@shortstop:
True that.
However I always consider that rethugs have their heads up their asses instead of wearing blinders. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Some Loser
The funny part is that even though Burns was right about the out come he chose not to be a jerk about it. Didn’t rub in people’s face, didn’t call people out. Fuck, he was goddamn pleasant up until the point Cole double-downed. It seems people are too damned stubborn to give him his due, though.
C’mon, shortstop, stop being a raging asshole for a minute. Burns was right about the outcome and off about the number. It is not that he hasn’t admitted as much.
Ruckus
@Some Loser:
Did you not read burnsy’s pontifications about how none of us know anything about the SC or the law? About how there can only be one outcome, the numbers, who and why?
Who died and made him lord high ruler of all that is legal?
Yes he got the direction of the outcome right. He got everything else wrong. Sure a lot of people did. Most(all) of us didn’t look down our noses at everyone else for having an opinion. Cause his informed opinion was wrong. And he’s pissed about us seeing and saying that.
shortstop
@Some Loser:
You’re going to have to show me the part where he “admitted as much.” All we’ve seen is tearful shrieks of “I was right about the outcome!” and a complete refusal to discuss the numbers. Please remember that no one asked him to predict those numbers–he chose to do so and to bray over and over about how he was absolutely certain about them because of his authoriteh.
He’s doubling down today by insisting that the decision doesn’t indicate that extraconstitutional judging goes on on the high court. I have no problem being a raging asshole by making him produce the constitutional grounds supporting the dissent. He won’t; he can’t, and pushing back won’t break his addiction to unearned arrogance. But we can at least make it less comfortable for him.
Some Loser
@Ruckus:
He was berating people because they were trying to judge the outcome solely on oral arguments. Of course, Burns wasn’t the only one getting angry about that. Even Omnes expressed frustration with that.
He got nearly everything right, actually. The only thing he was wrong on was Kennedy siding with the rest of the conservatives. That surprised most people.
I don’t really like defending the guy. He’s an asshole most of the time, but he was almost completely right on this. And after the decision came down in his favor, he didn’t act like a dick. Hell, he didn’t even really insult Cole for doubling down and being a stubborn asshole.
Give the devil his due and stop acting like stubborn dumbasses. It is not funny when Republicans do it, and it is even less funny when left-leaning individuals do it.
Some Loser
@shortstop:
He already mentioned that he thought Alito, Thomas, and Scalia were a bunch of hacks. Try not to be dishonest here. He contest the attitude that the Supreme Court is wholly corrupt and political. He was off by one vote and was right about the outcome, so he was more correct than most people who bet.
General Stuck
Nothing is extraconstitutional at the Supreme Court when it comes to deciding what is and isn’t constitutional. They are the masters of our realm in that role. We may not like or agree with it, and think it politically motivated. But it is not outside their defined role in the constitution. The only power we have against them is electing more people that think like we do, and appoint likewise judges. Unless they go completely insane, one of them ends up with a dead girl, or live boy in their beds, then we could impeach them, or our reps could. But that is about it.
As for burns, I think it is hilarious he has gotten under so many people’s skin around here, that they can’t help themselves but scream into the ethers. Which of course, is precisely what he intended. And none more so than you shortstop.
shortstop
@Some Loser:
Um, WRONG. You keep ignoring the fact that he made his 8-1, 7-2 prediction based on his unwavering belief that no more than two conservatives could fail to see the constitutionality of the act. That was the basis on which his numerical projection rested.
Well, twice as many as that failed. Almost half the court. And does Frank come back with something like, “Glad I got the outcome right, but I sure was wrong about the demonstrated ability of the court’s right wing to make completely partisan arguments without a constitutional basis”? Not only does he not do that; he’s back today insisting that Bush v Gore was a one-off. Your not having taken in most of these facts is not reason for us to worry about you thinking we’re being too hard on him.
General Stuck
@Some Loser:
That’s the way I read it as well. too funny.
shortstop
@Some Loser:
Mind showing me where he did that? I don’t have any problem admitting my error, if you can.
No, he contests the fact that the court is corrupt and political. No “wholly” about it. He simply will not engage the reality that nearly half the court is proven to be so–he hasn’t been willing to do this since this conversation started months ago. This is the reason he focuses on Cole’s extreme position and sidesteps the many, many commenters here who argue that one wing of the court acting like hacks presents an actual problem for American jurisprudence.
Off to a doc’s appointment but will check back later.
Some Loser
@shortstop:
Link
Give me your goddamn link, and I’ll judge for myself. The link above shows Burns, in a moment of clarity, admitting to himself that Scalia is becoming unhinged and changing his guess from 7-2 to 6-3. Where the fuck did you get 8-1 from?
He is insisting that Bush v. Gore is an outlier. I think he’s wrong, but I can see why he things that. He also insists just because someone doesn’t disagree with him doesn’t mean they’re hacks. Radical thought, right.
And as I mentioned before, he actually did say he thought Alito and Thomas were complete partisan hacks. He was surprised to add Scalia to the list.
Stop making shit up. Admit you and Cole were wrong. There is nothing with being wrong once and a while. I am wrong have the goddamn time I open my mouth, but you don’t see me stink of threads of my ignorance.
Edit: Comment 21.
Some Loser
@Ruckus:
Special for you, Ruckus.
General Stuck
@Some Loser:
I linked the actual comment. And reading it, burns prediction on Roberts was kind of prescient
Rafer Janders
@Some Loser:
Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
WayneL
Do you know what I hate about liberals? They are losers. They declare victory even when nothing has been won. They are sanctimonious assholes who think they only way to look at other human beings in down on them. They are often so wrong they make me laugh, while conservatives want to make me cry. Both want me to barf.
I just finished watch the opening monologue of The Newsroom. If there were one other person in this goddamn country who could say on national television exactly what I was thinking, I’d hold that person in the highest regard, too. All this crap about Sorkin is exactly what the right thinks, saps. They are brain dead. And not alone.
I only wish I could think half as well as Sorkin writes. I’m a liberal and proud of it.
Ruckus
@Some Loser:
Hey genius.
Notice that I was answering eemom?
Here is burnsy’s post that I was referring to from the same thread.
He was wrong about the mandate.
He was wrong about Kennedy.
He was wrong about the commerce clause.
He was wrong about the number.
I’m on to better things
Sad_Dem
Ruckus Says: @Mnemosyne:
I once worked for a non profit that had a glossy monthly magazine in which the managing editor would edit everyone’s stories into his voice. The writers there long enough just learned to write like him. It wasn’t bad but everything read the same, as if one person wrote the whole thing with different bylines.
That’s what Sorkin’s shows have always sounded like to me. I can’t enjoy his shows because of it. Maybe because I work as an editor and know blowhards like him all too well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: You know that the mandate was upheld, right? The mandate as a tax was fully briefed and argued. Also Roberts join the majority and wrote a narrow opinion that “leaves open the possibility of future reductions in the scope of the Commerce Clause.” Burns was wrong about Kennedy (as was I) and the number (as was I).
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Scratches head. This shit is so weird. It is basically between Cole and Burns, but that doesn’t stop the jackals from snarling and vicious. And I’m one that very much disagrees with you, eemom, and Burns, in general about the political court we have, except in this one case.
Will
The Newsroom sucks. That’s not surprising to me.
Batocchio
I’ve heard Sorkin speak a few times. He’s a great writer, and can be a bit arrogant and very impatient, especially with idiots. He’s a condescending prick here, and I largely agree with aimai’s take on why. I haven’t seen Newsroom, but when it comes to him and women as a writer, I think of the great characters played by Felicity Huffman, Alison Janney, Stockard Channing, Mary-Louise Parker, Janel Moloney, Marlee Matlin, Anna Deavere Smith, Emily Procter, Jorja Fox, Moira Kelly, Elisabeth Moss, Amanda Peet, and the late great Kathryn Joosten, among others.