Two Sorkins in One!

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

Sorkin, however, did not have any kind words for the Huffington Post, the news and commentary website that he believes helps power “a genuinely damaging force in our culture.” After being asked by Wieseltier if he believed the media had abdicated its role and duty to the public, Sorkin only called out one outlet by name. Here’s what he had to say:

I don’t think we’re very nice to each other anymore…There’s just too much money to be made and too much fun to be had laughing at somebody else fail. And that’s become okay. It used to be the kind of thing that you didn’t do in public…And now it’s what covers…the homepage of the Huffington Post. “13 Epic #Fails.” There’s the need to put an exclamation point after everything, and there’s the need to…create fantastic stories instead of just reporting on things that we need. So the adjectives and adverbs that you’ll see in headlines are always about how somebody issued a blistering this against [someone or something]—just anything to get a clip.

— Time-Warner-CNN-HBO spokesman/producer Aaron Sorkin in Mother Jones, as spotted on Friday by Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.

“Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation.”

You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go fuck ourselves now.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who’ve come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

* * * * * *

I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

— “In Her Defense, I’m Sure the Moose Had It Coming,” Time-Warner-CNN-HBO spokesman/producer Aaron Sorkin, writing in the Huffington Post, December 8th, 2010.

(Via John Nolte of Big Journalism.)