In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for CBS's Sunday Morning, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made his latest attack against Sarah Palin, ranting: "I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness. And demonize education and intellect. And I'm giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now." [Audio available here [1]]
Stahl made no effort to challenge Sorkin's vicious personal attacks, simply remarking: "He seems to be having a second career these days, going after Sarah Palin. In an essay for The Huffington Post, he called her a 'witless bully.'" Given the media's concern with civility and harsh political rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shooting, one wonders why Stahl did not condemn such language.
Sorkin went further, even questioning Palin's mental stability: "Sarah Palin, she needs a therapist, okay. We need the smartest guys, the best Ph.D.'s around, to be solving these problems. I don't have any patience with the glamorization of dumbness." Only seconds earlier in the interview, Sathl was asking Sorkin about his past addiction to crack cocaine, for which he attended rehab twice.
Stahl concluded: "Sorkin only dabbles in political commentary. What he works really hard at is writing his plays and movies."
In the same December 8, 2010 Huffington Post article [2] cited by Stahl, Sorkin compared Palin hunting on her TLC show to the animal abuse football player Michael Vick was found guilty of in promoting dog fighting. On CNN's Parker-Spitzer on October 4, 2010 [3], Sorkin declared: "Sarah Palin's an idiot. Come on. This is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean woman."
- Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here. [4]
