Aaron Sorkin

Some HOPE and we need it Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. Sorkin also teaches the craft of film and television screenwriting. When Aaron Sorkin writes a script, his voice is instantly identifiable and he has a rabid fan base. "As America tumbles ever closer to the pit, Aaron Sorkin is one of the few  that can accurately chart the detritus and find hope in it." He is smart and witty and fun and sexy. But that is not the reason I go back to him year after year. For a while now I have been using Sorkin as a safety net. Whenever the world seems to have gone crazy (and boy, have we had some of that in the last year or so) I know I can count on him for wise words, motivating anger and inspiration. On and off screen he manages to find the language I wish I had at my disposal. He is my writing God, my political model, and he gives me hope that we, the people, can be better, should be better, and have to show our leaders we want them to be better too. "Sorkin’s ideal universe hasn’t materialised. But the fact that there are people like him fighting, without fear and without making excuses for being intellectual and nerdy and preferring integrity over ratings, gets me up in the morning...Sorkin is my own private moral compass and guru of hope."  Ingeborg van Teeseling In Newsroom ...Sorkin explained both the problems America (is) facing... The series starts with a sequence that has been watched online more than 8.5 million times. In it, Will McAvoy, Sorkin’s grumpy news anchor lead, gets asked why America is the greatest country in the world. After trying to wriggle out of an answer, he finally says it really isn’t: “Are we the only country in the world that is so star-spangled awesome to have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan, the UK, France, Australia, and Belgium! We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined.” ...Sorkin and never leaves you hopeless, Newsroom quickly turns into an exemplar of how to fight back, to reclaim “civility, respect”, and use journalism as an honourable profession, not one of “bitchiness, gossip and voyeurism.” It is time, McAvoy’s producer gees him up, to follow Don Quichote, “speak truth to stupid” and show that “self interest is not our basic resting pulse.” Part of that truth is getting some of the facts straight. The real ones. So this is how Sorkin describes the Tea Party, the crazies that funded Trump and think he is the best thing since sliced bread now: “Ideological purity, compromise as weakness, a fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism, denying science, unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, a hostile fear of progress, a demonstration of education, a need to control women’s bodies, severe xenophobia, tribal mentality, intolerance of dissent, pathological hatred of the US government. In short, the Tea Party is the American Taliban.” ...He quoted cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead a few years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.”  Technology and social media have reshaped the understanding and awareness of etiquette. Incivility has risen to crisis levels. Many people believe that technology plays a central role in the decline of good manners. Social media influences how we feel about ourselves and the world we live in and it is compulsive and addictive. Dignity is not the same as respect, it is our inherent value and worth as human beings. Respect, on the other hand, is earned through one’s actions. ~    In the past our public officials were iconic role models who were expected to serve God and Country with dignity. But now as they are increasingly merely the agents of profiteering, exploitation and oppression, where is dignity? We seem to be left to sift through the dregs of pop culture for heroes. Mr. Sorkin is one of a very few contemporary writers offering us characters we can believe in and seek to emulate.