Voices: A Bushwhacked Media?
Bill Maher almost lost his show for criticizing Bush. Now Aaron Sorkin, creator and writer of "The West Wing," is being villainized for his criticism not of Bush, but of the mass media's loss of objectivity in portraying Bush.
"The media is waving pom poms and our entire country is being too polite," Sorkin is credited as saying in the February 24 issue of The New Yorker.
Did Sorkin's criticism of the president go too far in this time of war, FOX News questions. The conservative argument, as posed by the network, has avoided the free speech of the matter - of course he has the right to say it - but was it appropriate for him to say it?
I know it's just FOX news, which isn't really news so much as a machine designed to trick people into screaming at their television sets, but what if the attack on Sorkin was misunderstood as the truth?
Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilley Factor" introduces Sorkin with only two labels:
1. Drug Abuser (because Sorkin was nabbed with possession of psychedelic mushrooms in April)
and 2. Anti-establishment. O'Reilly concludes that "The West Wing" is left wing propaganda.
Let me get this straight - Tom Brokaw and NBC use Sorkin's show, "The West Wing" as a virtual template for their post 9-11 special "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing" and people are upset that Sorkin is criticizing their journalistic objectivity? At least Sorkin can tell the difference between fiction and reality.
A Sorkin advocate reminds O'Reilly that the producer/writer said first and foremost - "I'm behind the president 100 percent."
"You have to say that now," replies O'Reilly, seemingly unaware that his point validates Sorkin's.
"It is not unprecedented to criticize a president during a time of war," a defendant of Sorkin's states on later on "Hannity and Colmes."
Yet the precedent was made in September that we must stand united as a people, as a country, during this time of crisis. Bush continues to remind us that we are in this war against terror for the long haul. How long? No one knows. So when in this endless war on evil, will it be appropriate for the unsatisfied to speak their minds?
Remember before September 11, when more than half the population of the country didn't even want Bush to be president? Remember how they made fun of him - Sorkin used the phrase "bubblehead," but I've been recalling monkeys.
Who decides what is appropriate? Where are they holding classes and when can I sign up, because I just don't get it. Why can't we disagree with our country's engagement in this or any war? Because we were attacked? Was the pacifist activism of the Vietnam era really so effective that they're still scared? Cool.
I criticize theatre productions regularly for e.c., not to show how clever and sophisticated the paper is, but rather with the hope of encouraging and enhancing the quality of theatre for the people of NEPA - one of the productions I will be reviewing this month is, serendipitously enough, Aaron Sorkin's play "A Few Good Men," currently in pre-production at Diva Theater, scheduled to open the 15 of March.
Am I to criticize art but not criticize our government - the manner in which we are ruling ourselves as a people? Is this not a democracy? We are ruling ourselves, aren't we? Don't we want to do that better, too, if at all possible? Which do you find less pure and more in need of reform - artistic creation or the government?
Conservatives can criticize Colin Powell for telling an MTV audience that kids are going to have sex no matter how hard we preach abstinence, so at least let's encourage them to be safe, encourage condom use. He's not telling kids to have sex, but even if he was, they're not going to listen to him. They're going to listen to Britney Spears. But no - It was inappropriate for Powell to "send mixed messages" and to contradict Bush's cry of abstinence, they critique.
They are in denial of reality, belittling different view points instead of trying to understand them - now isn't that inappropriate?
--alicia grega-pikul, 28 February 2002
