I just Googled "aaron sorkin crack". The second result was a Fox News article titled "Former Crack Addict Aaron Sorkin Obsessed With Sarah Palin".

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Ya think?

My dad worked with him in the White House.
He is a smart man. And a Democrat. No wonder Fox News hates the guy.

All genre writers rip themselves off, but only an obsessive would actually notice. You try writing as much as this guy does on a tight deadline, see what happens!

Of course real writers care about this. Real writers get their work produced and published, and the people they're writing for expect content that they haven't already sold to someone else.

Spoonybard, I want references to a claim that outlandish. Everyone knows that writers who write for absolutely all walks of life rip each other off and never have an original idea.

See, if he said he did it intentionally, it would be a running joke or a signature style.

Since he hasn't, it's laziness...?

I think its a hack thing to do.

Similar themes and characters are one thing but exact lines of dialogue?

Seven whole minutes of exact lines of dialogue, most of it pretty incidental, out of six feature films and 231 television episodes.

Doesn't this sort of seem like asppergers, going though all that footage and making all these associations?

Ya think?

To be fair, a lot of people think he's awful for more than his dialogue. I think it stems from his over the top, mega-gravitas approach to handling issues and his incredibly ham-handed approach to adding his own politics into what he does, mary-sueing himself into a lot of what he does.
Oh, and also....
http://tinyurl.com/7tw28oo

And that IS being fair. There's a lot of perfectly valid criticisms to be made. There's a lot that's seriously flawed about Sorkin's writing, it's part of the fun. Let's get that episode out of the hopper so we can talk about a real television show, and not seven minutes of carefully edited who-gives-a-shit.

"over the top, mega-gravitas approach to handling issues and his incredibly ham-handed approach to adding his own politics into what he does"

Yeah, that's more or less what I meant by "very-special-episode feel." Horribly obvious and cheap moralism.

I guess I should make a full disclosure here. I saw all of Sports Night (a promise I made to a friend, who is female, believe it or not) and didn't really like it. I've never seen any of his other TV shows, but I think that, with minor flaws, his recent three movies have been written wonderfully. Now I'm kind of wondering how much the producers of those movies chopped out the worst parts, though.

I gave up pretty quickly on "Studio 60"; did Matthew Perry ever advance beyond a straw atheist? I recall the pilot episode, and how Perry's character couldn't even articulate what his beef with Christianity was (i.e., the harm caused by so-called Christians). So on the one hand you had the long-suffering eternally patient Christian, and on the other you had the insufferable smartass atheist who was being an asshole for really no reason.

I admit to being religious, or at least having religious beliefs. But I side with atheists with regard to the harm religion can do and does do, particularly as practiced by American Christians.

I don't Matthew Perry was a strawman. He was, to a certain extent, an obnoxious bigot who couldn't see past his dislike of religion enough to be with his funny, adorable Christian girlfriend, who was much more open and forgiving.

It was playing against the stereotype to have the secular humanist be the intolerant one, but it probably is a big reason why the secular humanists who are Sorkin's audience didn't warm up to the show. The six or seven Christians who tuned in by accident were no doubt pleasantly surprised.

I can put up with insufferable characters, but dude has a point of view that is at least worth mentioning in passing. How much trouble would it have been for Sorkin to toss out a "I'll be tolerant of Christians when they're tolerant of gays"? I assume the character is supposed to be appealing on some level.

Once I was flipping channels and happened to catch a later episode of the show; seems someone or other was kidnapped in a foreign country, and someone (Perry?) went up to long-suffering Christ-like chick and implored: "can ... can you teach me to pray?" Look, I get that there are no atheists in foxholes, but that doesn't mean atheists will want to become Baptists either. It was done better on "The Boondocks", with Huey praying alone (coincidentally the way Jesus said to pray): "I never prayed before. I don't even know who I'm praying to. Maybe I'm too young to know what the world is supposed to be... but it is not supposed to be this. It can't be this." How is it that a cartoon featuring the tuba-accompanied misadventures of Uncle Ruckus can do it better than Aaron Sorkin?

>>How much trouble would it have been for Sorkin to toss out a "I'll be tolerant of Christians when they're tolerant of gays"?

There was plenty of that. Like I said, he wasn't a strawman. He was just a jerk to his girlfriend. And in terms of being appealing, he was a great friend to his producer with the drug history.

Okay, I should have watched past the pilot episode.

>>Once I was flipping channels and happened to catch a later episode of the show; seems someone or other was kidnapped in a foreign country, and someone (Perry?) went up to long-suffering Christ-like chick and implored: "can ... can you teach me to pray?"

I'm pretty sure that wasn't Perry's character. Christ, I hope not. But, like I said, that show really jumped the rails toward the end.

Interestingly, the main characters from Studio 60 live on as Twitter accounts. Currently, they're discussing The Newsroom:

https://twitter.com/#!/MattAlbie60

https://twitter.com/#!/DannyTripp60

(Insert H.L. Mencken quote here.)

Sure, why not, but like I keep saying, if we get to discuss the actual episode of The Newsroom that's in the hopper, I'll have some critical things to say.

Voted up, just for you.

i like how much the very first episode of The Newsroom specifically addresses how television has lost a lot of its relevance due to pigheaded, arrogant snobs who demand that their voice and accompanying prejudices be respected over hard, empirical research.

and that people who turn their nose up at hard work and concrete findings as "obsessive" or "elitist" are most of the reason why the O'Reillys and the Glenn Becks of the world came into such demand.

...so i'm just assuming that this is what JHM is going to criticize if the episode gets out of the hopper.

Okay, I don't want to oversell my criticiswm, so here it is. I'll repeat it later.

It annoyed me that Sorkin put his question: "Why is America the greatest country in the world?" in the mouth of a cute blonde college student names Jen.

Objectively, I think it was a damned good question. It prompted a hard look at this huge article of national faith, but we were manipulated into thinking it was stupid.

If it had been a black woman or a muslim or even a white male student asking the same exact question in the same exact words, it wouldn't have seemed stupid at all. Sorkin exploited our prejudice to drive home his point about "Greatest country in the world" being unquestioned national dogma. Because she's a pretty blonde milk white maiden , who even flubbed the question a little, we can all assume that she's not actually questioning the dogma, she's just asking to have her beliefs reinforced.

So the Jeff Daniels character can browbeat her about her crappy generation, and everybody can be extra shocked by his answer.

Am I making my point? I hate this shit in movies. Two guys want to date julia Roberts, but we know which guy for because he has better hair. I'm, working on a theory that the world isn't really like that.

The thing is, it's still a classic scene. I'm not yet convinced that America isn't the greatest nation on earth. We've got Aretha Franklin; but it would be nice if we could consider

the possibility.

Very witty, Mr. Wilde. Very VERY witty!

And twenty per cent hydrogenated vegetable oil..