Aaron Sorkin: 'Eye-Poppingly Awful' Beck and Limbaugh 'Have Such Hate for Americans'
In an interview with John Hudson
of the left-wing magazine The Atlantic, screenwriter and producer Aaron
Sorkin described where he gets his news and quickly launched into a
tirade against conservative media figures: "Beck and Limbaugh
are eye-poppingly awful. It would be easier to buy their love of America
if they didn't have such hate for Americans. They're my generation's
Joe McCarthy..."
Sorkin claimed Beck and Limbaugh were guilty of "tarring anyone who
disagrees with them with schoolyard epithets and, of course, being
'un-American' or even on the side of America's enemies....They appeal to the worst in the worst among us..."
However, back in February, appearing on CBS's Sunday Morning,
it was Sorkin hurling "schoolyard epithets" at former Alaska Governor
Sarah Palin, smearing her as someone who "glamorized dumbness" and was
in need of a therapist.
Sorkin further argued in The Atlantic: "I'm a fan of the two-party system and a fan of
debate....[but] The effort gets choked to death when one side says the
other is fundamentally evil....I find the right trades in it a lot more
than the left." Meanwhile, he defended all of the haters at MSNBC: "Yes,
I've seen Olbermann and Matthews and Schultz and Maddow but they simply
don't compare to Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and Coulter. And Ingraham and
Breitbart and Palin and Gingrich." He added: "And with Fox News No. 1 on cable and Limbaugh
No. 1 on the radio, where did we get the idea that the media was
controlled by the left?"
Sorkin concluded by proclaiming "there's reason for hope," citing
moderate to liberal Republicans, including Peggy Noonan, David Frum, and
Mark McKinnon, as acceptable voices on the Right.
- Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
