Radio misogyny II

It's coincidental that after I wrote this post there was an article in the Washington Post's sunday magazine about shock jocks. It's written by a guy, Tyler Currier, but I think he kind of has the shock jock's number when it comes to misogyny and racism. These particular DJs are basically pumped up pretend frat boys but the reality is they're men in their late 30s/early 40s who are married and have kids. I've wondered how Adam Corrolla's wife deal with his statements about her and women and this article mentions a similiar issue with the guys' wives. They're auditioning "Junkettes," think Hooters girls, only probably unpaid, to stand around and do promotions for them. And they're, of course, really classy in handling the situation.

E.B. ogles a passing woman, one of seven who have arrived in skimpy duds at a Fairfax bar. "She's got nice boobies," he mutters.

Then there's this passage about the day following the audition where one of the guy's start talking about his wife on the air. Reporter's words are emphasized.

That night Cakes goes home and tells Amy that he danced with hot young women. He knows it'll be a subject on tomorrow's show. "It's called a preemptive strike," he later explains. "Even though it was nothing, it was innocent, I wanted it out there so that it didn't get blown into something out of proportion."

Still, Amy is livid: "I didn't think it was very funny. Any woman who loves her husband would be jealous if her husband comes home and says he's been at a bar dancing with other women."

As predicted, the next day the other Junkies relive Cakes's onstage bumping and grinding. Cakes tells the others he's in trouble with Amy. You just bought her an $80,000 kitchen, E.B. points out, making her sound like a gold digger.

Amy, who happens to be listening to the show, angrily reaches for the phone to set the record straight. "When I married John he was managing Toys R Us," she remembers saying on the air. "If I was materialistic, I never would have married him in the first place."

The Junkies laugh and tell Amy to take it easy. As E.B. often says: "This is all in a spirit of fun."

You notice a lot of this talk on radio. Think of it as the Tony Soprano-bargin. You get a nice house, vacations, cars, jewelry, whatever and in the meantime you're supposed to turn a blind eye to whatever I'm doing with other women.

I notice one method to radio misogny is to always talk harshly about "women's" foolish behavior, but to be laughingly accepting of men's foolish behavior, as if men's idiosyncrasies are amusing behaviors that are to be gently tolerated while women's idiosyncrasies are merely annoying habits that should be eliminated. You'll see this whenever radio hosts go into "Women do this" routines and notice the tone of voice they use for that description compared to the "Men do this" half which follows up. Also notice how many times a variation on the phrase "women do this" comes up on the show.

Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean update

I added two more reviews: Dirt and Bacon. Ten minute later I can still "taste" them both. Eww...

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Radio: the last bastion of open misogyny

Dating all the way back to my very first post, I'm fairly obsessed with radio and Adam Corrolla in particular. Now Adam isn't on Loveline anymore, he's got his new West Coast morning radio show that took over Howard Stern spot on the dial. I actually downloaded an episode once because Jeff Probst was going to be on and I always find he's inadvertently revealing about himself and the Survivor show. He reveals a lot more about himself than I think he knows.

Valentine's Day wasn't too long ago, and in sort of a coincidence I was also listening to some old Loveline episodes from close to Valentine's Day 2004. Adam Corrolla was just working himself into a lather about women. If you listen to him talk about women in general, but his wife in particular, you do really wonder if he thinks so little of her why'd he ever get married? There's not a single thing about her he has ever found complimentary to say on-the-air. He doesn't really even mention how smoking-hot she is for a guy like him. He says over and over again that all he really wants from women/his wife is for her to have sex with him and then to completely leave him alone. Not even really to talk to him. She's just a body essentially. There's basically no knock against women that Adam doesn't make. That they're stupid. That they only care about unimportant things. That they demand too much of their boyfriends. That women can't really make themselves "look" much better to the opposite sex but men, by earning more money or getting a better job can. That anytime a women does something from painting her nails to buying sexy underware, it's really just for men but usually men-don't-care-about-it so women should just stop. If your are an "ugly" woman it doesn't matter if you are confident or not, you're still unattractive. And while Adam does occassionally talk positively about women having accomplishments like earning degrees, because he judges a woman's value in her sexual attractiveness he kind of makes it all seem like "well why bother, having a J.D. isn't going to land you a man? Sure you can do it for yourself and that's great, but let's be real here, men don't care if you have a bunch of degrees. In fact it's worse for your chances if you do." To Adam there's no concept of women doing things for themselves. Occassionally he says women do things to show off for other women (such as painting one's nails or having a big wedding) which is almost a worse crime than showing off for men about things they don't care about.

When my two oldest friends came to visit me from out of town they pointed out how I had subtly or not-so-subtly started parroting some of Adam's points back to them. I was amazed how much I internalized his logic. Mostly about the male perspective on women and how they view potential mates. I tend to listen to old episodes of the show for about 4-5 hours a day and while I'm fully cognizant about the powerful persuasive effects of radio I just assumed that because I'm highly-educated and fully aware of its power I would be immune. But that kind of constant indocturinization is hard to constantly put a wall up against, especially when its self-inflicted. And that's magic of radio's effect. It really is like the supposed hypodermic needle theory of media effects, it's just not always so immediate.

One of the best put-downs my friend said to me about adam was "why would you want to take gynecological advice from a frat boy?" Good point.

Anyways it occured to me how much Adam isn't really a unique product of radio. Radio really is the last bastion for open misogyny in a way you rarely see in print publications and hardly as openly in television. It's not that TV can't be misogynistic. Oh, it can be. But when TV is misogynistic it's rarely as open has having a host of a program say things like women are as dumb as cows.

In radio there's the really big hosts like Tom Leykis or the appropriately named Mancow, even the aforemention Howard Stern who is far more respectful to male guests than female guests. Way back in 1998 I even worked for a very low-rent morning DJ called Andy Savage. This guy was just a total pig and completely unpleasant off-the-air. The Seattle Weekly even had a cover story where they had Andy's head going through a woman's legs. I remember it being a different looking cover than this one. I thought it was like her breasts were just about to rest on top of his head, but maybe my memory is off.

Anyway my point is why is radio the one special media forum where men get to act like pigs? And why is meaness better tolerated on the radio than in TV? A few people were talking about the difference between Adam Corrolla's radio schtick and his TV schtick in this thread and why his meaness simply works better off-camera. I don't really have an answer yet. But I'm always reminded of the fact that in Rwanda, it was radio broadcasts that were used to stir up the hatred for one's neighbors more than any other method of propaganda. There's something to that to ponder why radio worked its magic so well on human psyches, rather than TV.

Another candy review: Razzles

So ignore the angstiness of the last post. I was reading some of the other candy bloggers and I remembered I really wanted to talk about those Razzles I bought on the same trip to World Market. If you've watched that Jennifer Gardner vehicle 13 Going on 30 you know that the candy Razzles becomes a major plot point. Or minor. Or whatever because its mentioned about 500 times in the course of the movie and they could have literally inserted dialogue that said "I really long for [1980s candy] my 30-year-old Love Interest," "Yes, I remember when as 13 year olds we used to eat [1980s candy] together all the time. So why was I so fat but you were you so skinny?" I'm basically the same age as the character in the movie, but I don't remember Razzles all that much. I'm not sure I had even tried them as a kid although the name rings a bell. (Perhaps because it's just a great candy name?)

Since the movie went on and on about this particular candy I got interested in trying it. Also, I really love gum. But it was kind of surprising because I didn't see Razzles sold in that many places but when I did, it was kind of over priced. Like $1.75 each, overpriced. I think there must have been some deliberate attempt to restock the product after the movie came out as a nostoglia candy.

But on the same trip to World Market that I bought the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and the Jelly Belly Dinosaur Egg, I found the Razzles and decided to just bite the bullet and pay the whopping $1.25 for them.

Prognosis: Way too much hype. I didn't really get the whole "candy" part of the ad campaign for this product because it really is just a gum. It's kind of like a softer version of Giant Chewy Sweet Tarts that just falls apart in your mouth and has to be worked back together into gum. The gum itself wasn't that bad but I felt you had to have at least 3 pellets to make a good-sized chew. If this sold for $.50 it wouldn't be a horrible product but it's not a good enough gum or candy really to justify the price. Frankly the only candy-gum combo I think works well is Charms Blowpops where the gum is almost better than the lollipop.

The end of candy blogging, part II...the thrill of the scoop

Ironically a couple of candy bloggers have urged me not to stop just because others are doing it. I think my perspective on this dates back to my days as a reporter where there was quite a thrill to being the first (or only) person to cover a story. I can't quite translate why being the first matters. Or why having your story picked up by others means so much, or when its not credited to you, conversely annoyes the hell out of you. That it's an ego thing is pretty much the only way to explain it, and while I imagine it doesn't make much sense to people outside of the profession, now that more people are blogging I suspect the deep interest in being first, and/or being credited with being first by others, becomes a little more understandable.

Granted many in the media take the concept of being "first" and/or exclusive way too far. Especially if its some story that is going to be reveiled naturally anyway. A real scoop in my mind is when you are the first to cover a story that no one else would have ever covered without your reporting. Being the first to report the weather or pregancies isn't exactly news.

There are so many news/politics bloggers out there I think this is kind of why I have stayed away from that aspect as well despite the title of my blog being "Newscat." I don't want to be the 500th blogger to chime in my opinion about Cheney shooting a guy in the face unless actually have something unique to add to the discussion.

So when I realized how many other candy blogger there were out there, well I hate the feeling that I would be going over the same ground that, frankly, they can do better. There are other things I've contemplated reviewing food-wise, everything from Slim Fast Shakes (which I have every day) to varieties of Lean Cuisines. At least so I can offer reviews of other products people haven't already gone over with a fine-tooth comb.

Anyway when I have the time I need to write about the one big blog-type scoop I had in 2003 involving a certain Howard Dean quote. I wasn't blogging back then, but if I had been if might have been the one news item I had that could have gotten me some attention. I think of it now as "the one that got away" because the e-mail account where I stored the information was closed a while ago, and I didn't even think to save the important e-mails with my evidence. Anyway I will talk about it soon.

That famous SNL Gulf War Skit

For someone who's blog name is "Newscat" I sure don't talk much about current events or pop culture anymore. But I spend a lot of time on other people's news/politics blogs but most especially NYC professor Jay Rosen's Press Think. One of the things I really like about Jay is that after putting up his hugely literate essays, he then gets down into the trenches and argues with the trolls and press haters. Those people who will just reflexively call you a liberal-new-york-ivy-tower-professor-who-doesn't-know-anything-about-real-life. He actually tries to argue with them, and while sometimes I wonder why he bothers, I admit its interesting to watch.

But I was going on in a post about something I've been reminded of lately which is a certain famous Saturday Night Live Skit which mocked how the press behaved during the first Gulf War. The "joke" was the press would ask questions like:

"Which method of hiding SCUD missiles is working best for the Iraqis" and "knowing what you know, where would you say our forces are most vulnerable to attack, and how could the Iraqis best exploit those weaknesses?" all of which implied such a high level of stupidity on the press and inspired actual anger at their behavior. Of course its a joke, right?

Well here's the thing. There's a great word I learned in graduate school; simulacrum. It means a simulation of something that seems real enough to replace the original. Like The Daily Show is a simulacrum of the the news because it looks and acts just like the real news. In fact it might even replace the real news broadcasts in people's mind because the imitation is so perfect. But its not actually *perfect* though is it? It may look and sound like the real news, but everyone knows The Daily Show isn't really written by actual reporters.

It odd how one skit that's 14 years old can be so memorable. There's numerous references to it from many different people using it to make different kinds of points. I think over time, the skit itself has replaced any real collective memory of how the actual press behaved during the Gulf War with this simulation of how they behaved. Even in people like former Senator Alan Simpson, when they think about the press behavior during the Gulf War I bet their memory doesn't reference any actual incident of stupid question but probably goes back to this very skit as just a kind of amalgamation of press behavior during the Gulf War. I particularly like this reference:

[Lorne] Michaels remembered that at the start of the Persian Gulf war, the show did a sketch about reporters harassing Gen. Colin L. Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with ludicrously specific questions about where the United States would attack. "In Powell's book he said that when he saw that sketch, he knew the country was behind him," Mr. Michaels said.

There is also this quote from a cMay 20, 1991 Newsweek "Perspectives" piece.

"It was not a trivial component. It gave us an indication that things weren't being handled too badly." A senior White House official, on how the administration KNEW the public was on its side on gulf-war press restrictions after "Saturday Night Live" began lampooning the war media.

But here's the problem...the simulation is not a perfect reflection of the original. Did some members of the press (especially the TV journalists) ask asinine questions during briefings? I'm sure you can pull some transcripts and seem some boneheaded ones. Were they ever as bad as this skit implied? Hardly. But has the "badness" of the press behavior been permanently cemented as reflected in the SNL skit. I think in many ways it has.

When I was an undergraduate I took a class in war reporting (this would have been around 1997-98). One of the things I was genuinely shocked to learn was how poorly reported the first Gulf War was. In many ways it was seen by lay people (like my 16 year old self) as "over reported." Like there was too much information about it. But in hindsight it was actually one of the most censored wars ever (which is probably why it was so popular). I think this snippet from a 1998 radio interview with Warren Strobel, then a White House Correspondent for the Washington Times rather nicely sums up the situation.

PORTER: Did you see the Saturday Night Live skit they did of the military briefing, the press conference, where some of the questions were things like "Can you tell us exactly where the military is going to strike?", or another question I remember was, "What would be the most damaging piece of information that Saddam Hussein could find out about the US military?"

STROBEL: And will you tell it to us now?

PORTER: Yeah, and tell it to us now, yeah.

STROBEL: It was one of those comic things that really, I mean it struck to the heart of the matter, because that was the view that the American people had of the media, that we were just, you know, getting in the way of the war effort, being irresponsible and silly. And that's also I think what the military wanted to project. So again there was a lot of gut-wrenching, soul-searching kind of stuff after the war took place. And everybody for a year or so sort of thought, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be sort of the motif for media-military relations for the coming CNN age." But it turned out to be very, what's the word, misleading.

In many ways its not unlike the Spanish American War where all the unpleasantness is kept hidden until the historians find it decades later by which the public perception has long moved on.

What interests me about this particular skit was how the comedy of it has replaced the reality in many people's imaginations about the press. As Stephen Colbert might say, it feels true so that's the same thing as being true, isn't it? It felt like the media people were stupid and dunderheaded and wanted to reveal secret battle plans so that must be how they actually behaved. Though this attitude may start from a simple joke, it remains with the viewer and is subtly influencing other thoughts about press behavior down the road.

The real thing is the best propaganda come from comedy, not direct appeal. Comedy is the backdoor to one's subconscious and a comedic point can actually be accepted far more directly than anyone trying to make a logical one.

The end of candy blogging

I may have to get out of the candy reviewing business. I've been having a nice e-mail discussion with The Candy Addict today and I didn't realize how vast candy/snackfood review blogging is. It's a whole subgenre of blogging that I hadn't been aware of until last week and now that I'm aware of it I don't know if I want to "compete" by offering the same product they are. Especially when they can do it better knowing how to make pretty graphics. (I especially like Candy Blog's visual look. Gummi Bears are so iconic yet pretty.)

When people specialize their blogs, be it about candy or coffee, they can attract a certain audience that then knows they can depend on their blog for that kind of commentary. Whereas while my blog is scattershot in topic, its probably less likely to attract an audience, but more fun for me to produce.

The other reason to end the candy blogging...it's making me hungry. I was mentioning a couple of types of candies I've liked such as Sweet Tarts Rope and Trolli Brite Crawler Eggs that are so sugary that after I ate them (or more likely a LOT of them) I would start worrying that I just gave myself diabetes. Sort of like that you know that joke from The Simpsons featuring Grandma Plopwell's low-fat pudding that gave Carl diabetes.

A Review of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

You've probably seen these Harry Potter inspired Jelly Bellys "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans." I was in World Market and for $5 they had a box of 10 flavors to try but essentially were the gross ones. I've spent $5 on worse stuff and since I've been inspired by Candy Addict's reviews I thought I would try my own.

Prognosis: I don't make a good tester.

Now honestly I've seen these around for a few years and just assumed the flavors were put-ons. Sure they may claim to be vomit-flavored but I just assumed there would be some unremarkable taste instead.

Boy was I wrong!
The flavors included in the box are: Earwax, Booger, Bacon, Black Pepper, Vomit, Dirt, Soap, Rotten Egg, Grass, Earthworm. There is also a Spinach, Sardine and Spagetti-flavored ones but they were not included in my box set.

Soap: Sweet, sort of a nothing flavor but there is a faint after taste of something that could be called “soapy.” Almost like tasting the smell of Tide.

Grass: Doesn’t taste like much. Just sweet. Some people have noted it does taste a little like grass, but I didn't taste the flavor.

Pepper: Definite “pepper” taste that’s pretty unmistakable. Not hard to eat but not particularly pleasant. Flavor sticks around a particular while. I ended up having to drink some milk to get rid of the taste in my mouth.

Bacon: A really bizarre combo. There is a definite “bacony” flavor that is sort of like eating Bac-Ohs but coated in sugar. You know it’s artificial but your brain says “bacon-flavor.” First one I had to spit out. Also the taste is kind of long-lasting. Even after eating Dirt I can still taste the fake bacon flavor. Ewww.

Dirt: For some people this could almost be an edible flavor. Sort of reminded me of black licorice which is not a candy I enjoy. I don’t think the flavor for any of these candies comes from the gummy inside but the shell so as you bite down the first flavor is usually sugar and it take a while for your tongue to melt the shell and get the flavor. So is it “dirt?” It has earthy, dark taste which is why it makes me think of black licorice.

After reading other reviews of the rest of the flavors I gave up. I think I'm going to put the box on my desk and pay anyone $1 if they are willing to try the Vomit one.

Here is a really funny letter to Jelly Belly about this product written by an 83-year-old.

Candy is a sugary sacred treat. A reward, a prize. Something you can count on to satiate a craving. You're turning it into a sick game of Russian Roulette. I've played that game in a German prison camp in World War II after my battalion was captured, and girl, you don't want to go there. So please, for the sake of the children, please stop manufacturing this product. If that Harry Potter wasn't so damn popular, you'd never be able to find a reasonable excuse to wreak havoc on supermarket isles like this. J.K. Rowling is probably mortified that someone would turn her fiction into reality. You people are no more intelligent than a kid who emulates "Jackass" stunts and winds up in the hospital or (better yet)dead.

Read the rest of it...

UPDATE: Apparently I didn't look close enough. The letter is a joke written by a Hamphire graduate. Hampshire College! I should have known. Awfully clever people go there. My cousin went there...but also one of my nemesises did too.

Why blog about West Wing and Aaron Sorkin?

I wanted to explain why I spent so much time "obsessing" about a stupid little show and a minor incident that happened five years ago. There's a couple of reasons.

1. Preservation of a good story. The Sorkin history at Twop is just a really interesting story to me. I was in a graduate-level class in Georgetown Unversity that was called "Critical Theory Approaches to Television" and we were talking about fans and television. How fans change TV essentially. How TV talks "back" to the fans (Lost is notorious for this). Its not insane to imagine TV writers, TV actors, TV producers hunting down fan sites and Twop message boards to see what people have written about them. In many cases Twop is the only place someone can read audience comments about their show.

Anyway in this class of mine another student actually referenced the Sorkin-Twop-U.S. Poet episode. She clearly knew the history. You know, I wound up talking to her after class but I sensed that, while she lurked on the boards, she wasn't that much of an active participant.

2. Practice blogging. Another reason I wanted to write out the story was just to give myself some practice in long-form blogging. Particularly something that took a little time to compose and research. (I even had to draw up a timeline for myself as much for "other" readers, and that's when I noticed the disparity between my memory and what Ihad from mjforty.)

So I'm not obsessed with The West Wing or Aaron Sorkin. I'm not obsessed with a TV show(s) that aired four years ago. Its just a little bit of practice for myself in blogging as well as storytelling.

Aaron Sorkin, West Wing, televisionwithoutpity timeline

UPDATE: I found an MSNBC piece that both quotes Aaron Sorkin's return comments to Twop and also puts them in Feburary 10-11, 2002. This would have been before "Night Five" aired.

UPDATE II: I found another specific quotation of something Sorkin said on Twop. This would be a lot easier if those posts simply still existed and people could look them up themselves instead of trying to recreate all of his statements. But the message boards are kind of fragile. You can't really find any message boards posts older than a few years (although the recaps can be much older).

This story of mine is so complicated that I decided I need to do it as an actual timeline to go along with this post.

Sept. 22, 1999
The West Wing debuts- "Pilot"

Dec. 12, 1999
Christmas episode “In Excelsis Deo” airs

September 2000
West Wing wins five Emmys, including one for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for the episode "In Excelsis Deo." Story is co-credited to Rick Cleveland and Aaron Sorkin. However at the Emmy podium, Sorkin hogs the mike.

April 17, 2001
Aaron Sorkin is arrested for drug possession at airport

May 2001
Huge contract negotiations problems with West Wing writers for third season. These negotiations include some of the real politicos who serve as consultants to show such as Dee Dee Myers. Raises that are promised in contracts do not happen.

June 2001
Sorkin and his wife separate. They have one child and will formally divorce in 2004.

Sometime in late June 2001...
Sorkin posts on Twop boards and "disses" Rick Cleveland. Actual posts are long gone but some articles quote from them. (Also Mickey Kaus sucks). Sorkin's comments leak out to the NY Post, feud becomes public and but then is resolved publically on Twop boards (Sorkin apologizes to Rick Cleveland on the boards, Cleveland accepts on the boards.) Sorkin comes on to post that because of this incident he's basically not allowed to post anymore or "they" will take away his keyboard. There is some flavor of his statements to Twop at the time in what C.J. Cregg says to Josh Lymon in the "U.S. Poet Laureate" episode. Not the "shove a motherboard so far up your ass" part, but I recall him saying "someone" was now checking to make sure he never posts again and C.J. says something like that to Josh.

September 11, 2001
'nuff said.

October 10, 2001
Third season of West Wing begins with a "very special episode" called “Isaac and Ishmael" and is more or less a reaction to the events of Sept. 11. I hate it. Twop recapper deborah hates it. It's widely panned. A year later even Sorkin will say about it, “I'm not even sure it was good television.”

Feburary 6, 2002
"Night Five" airs. It has a very specific plot where Sam and Ainsley discuss what workplace sexism is and totally agree that whatever is happening between them isn't sexist because Ainsley is like totally feminine and likes sex and therefore is okay when her boss compliments her body in the workplace while other women observe. While I can't show what the Twop boards looked like in 2001, Aaron Sorkin's sexist writing had been in discussion at lot in 2001 which the timing would have worked out for him to essentially write "Night Five" in response to these specific criticisms that were popping up in late 2001. I have a very specific memory that the anti-female sexism threads had been in intense discussion on the Twop boards long before this episode aired and why many people saw it as a response to things talked about on Twop. It could explain why only a few days later Sorkin pops on the boards.

Feburary 10 & 11, 2002
Sorkin returns to the Twop boards briefly to argue with deborah and that's he's not sexist. The actual posts are gone but an MSNBC article quotes some of his posts:

Someone using the name “Benjamin” has been logging on to www.televisionwithoutpity.com and discussing the writing and thought behind the show in the first person, in a "forum" set up, as the site's monitor notes, "for people to address remarks to Mr. Sorkin." Sorkin, whose middle name is Benjamin, has posted messages on the site using that alias, but his spokesman declined to say whether the "West Wing" creator has been contributing to the site lately.

“I spent a few minutes reading recent posts,” notes “Benjamin.” “‘Sexism’? ‘Why I hate this show’? What happened to the good old days of ‘Aaron Sorkin arrested’?” Then addressing himself to someone who criticized one of the show's episodes, Benjamin said, “Wednesday nights at nine there are like 168 things on television, you should watch something else 'cause I don't think this show’s your cup of tea.”

In another lengthy posting, Benjamin discusses the show’s philosophy and says, “I and everyone else here are, honestly, thrilled that there are these fan sites where strangers get together and talk about the show and like the show/don't like the show (I’d prefer if you liked the show) but you ought to disabuse yourselves of the notion that what we do is debate a point and then declare a winner. We're just telling our little stories and doing our lame jokes. And hoping you'll keep tuning in.” (Read the full Benjamin postings for Feb. 10 and Feb. 11.)

Sorkin caused a flap last summer when he got into a debate on the same Web site with former "West Wing" writer Rick Cleveland, and ended up apologizing. “Benjamin” makes jokes about the incident. “After the Rick Cleveland fiasco my office put one of those child locks on all the WW fan sites. We just moved to a new system so I have a very brief window of opportunity before they lock it up again.” He signs off, “Uh-oh, they're coming to get me. Quick, pretend I'm working. . . . ”

I also found this statement from those posts.

If you asked most people around here they'd tell you that "Gone Quiet" was the weakest show we've done. It was the only episode that USA Today has liked this season. I'm mentioning this because of the very unscientific yardsticks by which we measure how much the public enjoyed a particular episode, places "Night Five" among the TOP five we've ever done. Alot of us agree (including me, I'm afraid.) Does that make someone wrong for not liking it? Of course not. - Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin

[I hate quoting things in piecemeal because I can't give give an entirely accurate portrait of the totality of Sorkin's remarks, and the reaction they got back in 2002. Someone could very easily read the snippets I've quoted and think "well that wasn't all that bad." Remember that I can't show you the entire conversation, I can only recreate parts of it that have been quoted elsewhere. Also think about the differences in power between deborah, the recapper (or critic) the posters who pretty much only have Twop to make themselves heard, and Sorkin, head of an entire creative team and writer of a top ten show and how big his microphone was compared to deborah's or any poster's on Twop. Drawn Together's writers taking on their review in Entertainment Weekly this was not.]

Here's what mjforty wrote that she remembers Sorkin saying when he last appeared on the boards.

His post, had it been posted by any other poster, would have probably gotten him banned. It suggested that one poster should probably walk away from his computer/t.v. set and get outside more. It told deborah there were hundreds of other things to do at 9:00 p.m. on a Wednesday night and perhaps she consider doing them. It took to task people who couldn't see why he was not sexist. (For the record: no one was calling Sorkin sexist, just that there were some problems with the way certain situations and certain female characters were written).

March 27, 2002
“U.S. Poet Laureate” episode airs. Laura Dern's final speech to Toby echoes in many ways Sorkin's statements on Twop about "We're just telling our little stories and doing our lame jokes. And hoping you'll keep tuning in.” Dern-as-Poet-Tabitha says in the episode

"Do you think that I think that the artist's job is to speak the truth? An artist's job is to captivate you for however long we ask for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky. And I don't get to decide. What you said about South Korea makes sense, you know. Your people
know more than I do...I write poetry, Toby, that's how I enter the world."

Twop recapper Shack has a pretty good response to this silliness. I found a quote from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that I liked as a response too. "'The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots."

November 27, 2002
Season four has started. "Artic Radar" airs. In this episode there is a subplot about a temp worker who is also a devoted "Star Trek" fan and wears an unseen "Star Trek" pin while working in the White House. (Unseen because the viewers never see how big or garish it was). Josh Lymon has a long speech about what the woman is engaging in is "fetism" not fandom. One imagines Sorkin has seen the response to both "Night Five" and "U.S. Poet Laureate" and then writes this coda to his relationship with his fans (not just Twop) in "Artic Radar."

As as sidebar, in the Twop forums a poster Gordon Shumway writes of a personal encounter he had that may have also inspired this episode a tiny bit.

I have been trying not to say this but I think that I am the basis for the Star Trek pin thing. I attended a booksigning of Aaron Sorkin's first script book at Brentano's shortly before the start of Season 4. In fact, it was two days before the news broke that Rob Lowe was leaving the show.

I was standing in line with a couple of other TWoP posters, but I was the only one brave enough to wear a retro "Vote Bartlet 2002" T-Shirt, that had "Tubey" on the back. When I had Aaron autograph the four copies of the script book I had purchased, told him that I thought "17 People" was just about the tightest show ever written and it was fine with me if he never had another guest star ever again, and he looked up to see my shirt, and said "Neat shirt." and I told him it was from TWoP. He had not seen the back, but someone with Aaron asked him if he had seen the shirt, and he answered, "Yeah." The tone in his voice was not one of approval or enthusiasm.

I am a big Aaron Sorkin fan and one of his biggest supporters during time of extreme criticism being thrown in his direction. I was not pleased with the tone of derision in their voices, but I got over it.

And I do, to this time, continue to wear my assorted TWoP shirts to work. I love them and no one has a problem with them. I guess doesn't hurt that I provide copies of missed program the the CFO.

[Just in case people think the poster invented this story four years after it happened, I do recall Shumway mentioning something like this happening a long time ago.]

Coda to Sorkin and Twop
July 13, 2005
After not being heard from personally since last 2001, Sorkin's assistant Lauren pops on the boards to contradict some information about an article printed in the New York Observer that was a reprint from the U.K. Guardian. Her board name is Donniene and she posts three times; once with the Observer correction, once to say she's been his assistant since the first season of West Wing/second season of Sports Night, a third time to note:

Aaron and Tommy have discussed coming back and doing the last few episodes of the series and I know that Aaron has talked to Rob about coming back for that occassion as well (at the moment, Aaron and Rob are preparing to start rehearsals in London for the West End premiere of a A Few Good Men.)

Then, John Spencer dies suddenly of a heart attack. Sorkin, using Lauren's Donniene screename, posts this final message to Twop. I can't help but feel that he must have made his peace with it because 2006 isn't 2002 and so much time has passed.

Dear Posters,

Tommy Schlamme, John Wells and I wanted to thank you for all your many expressions of sympathy and sadness at the death of our friend, John. He never took those who appreciated his work for granted--always happy to read and respond to a letter from a stranger--and somewhere in Heaven he's baffled and delighted by an outpouring of affection from people who who had never met him but felt like they had. You've also provided a great source of comfort to the people he left behind, including the cast and crew of The West Wing.

Several of your posts will be read out loud at his memorial service.John was the ultimate team player. He was mortified at the notion of doing anything that might detract from the collective goal or disturb another member of the company. The other night, Tommy said, "Leave it to John to die at the beginning of the Christmas break so as not to disrupt production." After a table read of an episode called "Bartlet for America", John stepped over to me and said, "I want to serve this script. Stop me in the middle of a take if it seems like I'm trying to win an Emmy." Of course he went and did both.All he ever wanted to be was a working actor, and he was a working actor until the day he died.

He was beloved and revered by everyone who ever worked on our show, and he will be missed and remembered every day.

Thank you again.

Aaron Sorkin

Whoo-hoo! I show up on google!

Third hit under "newscat"

The long back story of Aaron Sorkin, West Wing, Televisionwithoutpity and the "U.S. Poet Laureate" episode

Note added 10/16/2010: I originally wrote this post back in 2006. It remains the most read post on this blog, often linked to when someone writes about Aaron Sorkin’s relationship to the internet or to his fans. I’m happy it’s become a part of his permanent history. Although most of it remains in the tone originally written I have tried to clean it up and make it more understandable to anyone who has never come across Televisionwithoutpity.com especially before it was sold to Bravo.

Note: For a clearer version of events, you can also see the timeline I drew up.

I spent a lot of time on televisionwithoutpity.com. In fact I've been a member since July 2000. For those who didn’t know, TelevisionwithoutPity was a website created by people who wanted a place to write recaps about television (snarky recaps) and also host message boards. Its motto was “Spare the Snark and Spoil the Network.” It’s since been sold to Bravo and had greatly changed in tone, but back in 2000 it was the best website for television commentary and for those who wanted to communicate with watchers of ANY tv show out there. So I wanted to "preserve" for posterity a backstory to the TV show The West Wing and creator Aaron Sorkin's relationship to that website in the show's first three years. Televisionwithoutpity is usually abbreviated to TwoP by fans.

So if you're watched The West Wing in the third season there was an episode where Laura Dern plays...you guessed it, a U.S. Poet Laureate. The plot of this episode, which you can read a full recap here, is basically about the new U.S. Poet Laureate wants to use a special dinner in her honor to berate the fictional president about his stance on the landmine treaty. Toby, who has a crush on her, has to convince her *not* to make such an embarrassing statement (embarrassing for the president. I think he really oversells how "embarrassing" it would be to her).

It's not bad little episode. Certainly well acted. But then there's this little "B" plot which involved Josh Lyman, Donna Moss and a certain "fan" website.

Now you might have watched this episode and known nothing about Televisionwithoutpity (TwoP) and the somewhat fractious relationship it had with Aaron Sorkin. It's a bit like looking at a Goya painting and knowing nothing about his relationship to the Napoleonic War. You can appreciate the "art" without knowing the backstory.

But for those of you who want to know from someone who was posting around this funny little website back in 2000-01, here's where that "Lemonlymon.com" subplot comes from.

First Season, Sorkin as "Benjamin"

Back in the first season of West Wing, Aaron Sorkin and Rob Lowe used to post on the TwoP West Wing boards. Sorkin posted as "Benjamin" which is his middle name. I never actually saw the Rob Lowe's posts but other posters said he that Rob Lowe posted under the name "Sam Seaborn." Lowe didn’t post much. Just “thanked people, jokingly complained that we were too obsessed with his hair.”

As to the nature of Sorkin's posts...they were pretty friendly but not too frequent. Pretty much after “Benjamin” (Sorkin) posted, there would be a host of people asking "how do we know that's really Sorkin?" which is pretty usual for message boards. I always believed it was him because he did provide some spoiler information and occasionally added a little information about what he was thinking about particular scenes or plots. The only example of these explanations I remember distinctly is his response to a question I posed regarding "Someone's Going to the Emergency Room" where Toby confronts a bunch of WTO-type protesters. I was upset because Toby (née Sorkin) through the guise of “fiction” promotes the fallacy that "free trade stops wars." A bullshit theory. It’s completely false and a pat answer to anyone who had issues with corporate-directed trade treaties. Among everything else that is wrong with it, the assertion that nations that trade together are less likely to go to war simply isn't true. We trade a lot with both China and Saudi Arabia and our relations are still quite fraught.

On the TwoP boards I took Sorkin to task for promoting that view and he added that there was originally supposed to another line in the episode where the cop guarding Toby makes a point about how the WTO doesn't have the power to enforce child-labor laws. The line was filmed but Sorkin said it was cut because the episode has to fill only so many minutes and even seconds and can't go over that. (That's kind of how he put it..."one of the problems of working in TV is that you have only 42 minutes and 13 seconds and can't go a second over that...")

In the first season of the West Wing Aaron Sorkin was on the boards fairly regularly. Of course it was a "new" show back then, he was probably happy to talk to fans (and such intelligent ones). I don't want to overestimate the number of times he came on the boards...if he posted a total of 15 times that would surprise me. It was probably closer to 10 times.

Rick Cleveland and The Emmys

So here's where the problem starts. In September 2000 West Wing, and Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland in particular, won an Emmy for writing the season one episode "In Excelsis Deo" where a dead homeless vet had a coat of Toby's. The episode is co-credited to writer Rick Cleveland (who's best known now for his work on Six Feet Under. Text: so he’s not a hack. Remember this later when I mention Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). At the Emmys Sorkin takes the mike and basically hogs it. Cleveland didn't even get to speak.

Days before the Emmy ceremony, people connected to the show said, Mr. Cleveland sent Mr. Sorkin an e- mail message saying that, if they won, he would like to say a brief word in honor of his father because the episode was autobiographical. Mr. Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran, had spent the last years of his life as an alcoholic living in flophouses. Mr. Cleveland had lost touch with his father when he was 13. After his father's death, Mr. Cleveland had found that his father had numerous war decorations and sought to bury him in Arlington National Cemetery.

At the Emmy Awards, Mr. Cleveland was not given the opportunity to say a word by Mr. Sorkin. In fact, Mr. Sorkin conspicuously ignored him onstage. Mr. Sorkin said today that he forgot to thank Mr. Cleveland, just as he forgot to thank his wife.

But in an article for the Writers Guild magazine after the Emmy awards, Mr. Cleveland discussed the Emmys and chided Mr. Sorkin. "You might not remember me from that night," Mr. Cleveland wrote. "I was the guy wearing the little wire- framed glasses, standing directly behind Aaron Sorkin. I had a dumbfounded smirk on my face, and I imagine I must have looked like a member of Sorkin's security detail. When he was done speaking, he kind of ushered me offstage with him, and, dumbly, I followed."

Mr. Cleveland termed the Emmy episode "somewhat humiliating." Mr. Cleveland is now a writer on the HBO series "Six Feet Under."

Such churlish behavior didn't go unnoticed on the TwoP boards. We commented on it. During a period when there were news reports about non-Sorkin West Wing writers getting stiffed of their pay raises some TwoP posters, such as mjforty took Sorkin, as the Executive Producer, personally to task for the situation of his other writers.

"I'm extremely disappointed in the producers of this show. And I think that Aaron Sorkin is getting off a little too lightly here." -- mjforty posted.

Sorkin posted a reply which I have posted here thanks to ww_renaissance. You can now read for yourself the full text of Aaron Sorkin's exchange with Rick Cleveland on Twop. She has more on her site. All typos are in the original.

mijorty[sic], You got it wrong. It's understandable, but you got it wrong. On most TV staffs, stories are pitched, broken and outlined by a group, then assigned to the various writers on the staff, then polished by the show runner. That's not the way it works here. I write the scripts with the enormous help of a staff that provides research and kicks ideas around with me as well. It's like a new play being written every week. They work really hard and do a great job and they're all going to write their own scripts one day, so by way of a gratuity, I give them each a Story by credit on a rotating basis. That credit comes with money.

That said, they're paid as if they were writing scripts (and some of them have producer titles as well--simply based on what they were getting at their last job.) We're under a tremendous budget crunch here. I know it seems, with the success of the show, like we should have all the money in the world, but it doesn't work like that. People were let go in all departments; grips, gaffers, props, hair and make-up, set dressing, post-production ... And the cases of a few writers (whom I'm very fond of) their contracts called for them to get bumps which would have been very difficult to justify given their job descriptions. Their contracts also give us the option to not pick up their option, which Tommy, John and I didn't want to do given their loyal service to the show and our personal friendships with them. So we asked them if they'd be willing to stay on at their current salaries, supplemented by the money they'd get from story credits. In no way a violation of the Writers' Guild contract, in spirit or otherwise. John, I assure you, would never do that.

The two who left are both gainfully employed on other shows. In fact there was a bidding war over their services. Those who stayed seem very happy they did.

All of this was explained by any number of people to Bernie Weinraub at the New York Times. Bernie Weinraub, it would seem, is very casual about the truth.

Finally, on a vain and selfish note: In the first season, I was doing both The West Wing and Sports Night at the same time and I wanted to try seeing if The West Wing could run like a normal TV show. I gave a staffer named Rick Cleveland a script assignment. He wrote a script called "A White House Christmas" wherein the First Lady's cat trips a Secret Service alarm. I can't much else except mention was made of a business card found in an old coat of Toby's that he'd donated to Good Will. I threw out Rick's script and wrote "In Excelces Deo." Because Rick had worked for months on his, I gave him, rather than a Story by credit, a co-written by credit and put his name ahead of mine. For my script, he received a Humanitas nomination, an Emmy Award and a Writers' Guild Award. Every Emmy nominee gets a letter from Don Mischer, the producer of the telecast, very clearly saying that only one person is allowed to speak when accepting. After that person is done, the orchestra will play you off. Rick could'ce done the St. Crispin's Day speech that night for I cared. It wasn't my call.

This, too, was explained to Bernie.

At the end of the first season, Rick was fired. Not by me and for economic reasons. It was by John Wells and it was for lack of performance. He was then hired by Gideon's Crossing, where he was fired by Paul Attanassio for the same reason. - Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin

Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
by Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin
June 26, 2001

Classy, eh? (you can read the full response from Cleveland about Sorkin’s post on TwoP and Sorkin’s apology at the bottom of this post or on ww_renaissance.)

Now I just have to say, I hate Mickey Kaus of Slate. Especially since he uses the line of reasoning "How weird is it that a big celebrity macher like Sorkin bothers to defend himself (and attack others) on what is basically a fan site?" It's not “basically” a fan site nor was it only devoted to West Wing. And Sorkin posted before this incident as I explained. But Kaus seems to think that Aaron Sorkin was demeaning himself by dwelling with us posters, something you might notice is a theme of the LemonLymon plot. But I’m including this link because Kaus does have a fairly decent rundown of the event and some of its meaning at that time. But the basic point is that Sorkin thought he could comment on the internet where no one was looking. I think you can see the beginnings of his curmudgeonly attitude about the internet starting right here. So to everyone: Sorkin loved the internet before he figured out it was a printing press and not a telephone with conference calling abilities (with a mute button).

So long story short, "Benjamin" née Sorkin comes onto the TwoP boards and basically disses Cleveland's writing ability. He implied that he had to throw out most of Cleveland's script because it was horrible ("he had a subplot about a cat" as if you can imagine was the subtext), and that he "gave" Cleveland co-writing credit only out of some kind of goodness of his heart. Hmmm, wonder what would happen if Rick Cleveland found out he felt that way?

Also the issue of writing credits didn’t come out of nowhere. Up to about season 4 nearly all the scripts were credited either solely or partially to Sorkin. I think by season 2 there was already some grumbling that Sorkin was both a control freak and an egotist who refused to acknowledge the work the other writers contributed. All the writing genius had to be his, even if, like most shows, it’s collaboration (also read the comments below, supposedly from a “tv writer.”)

Who knows what the real truth is...but I definitely recall that TwoP co-founder Wing Chun came on the WW boards and posted that its not *Sorkin's* decision to dole out writing credits on a whim. The Writer's Guild (which I believe is the correct union) has very strict rules about assigning writing credits and no one should take Aaron Sorkin at his word that he just "gives" co-writing credits by way of a “gratuity” to staff writers. It’s in union contracts so if someone is co-credited it means something very specific.

Anyway Rick Cleveland (who only posts twice) comes on the board as himself (His user name was "Rick Cleveland") and basically defends his co-credit on writing "In Excelsis Deo." He specifically said the bit about the homeless-vet-with-coat story actually happened to his dad. So it was more than just a subplot with a cat he contributed. The story was actually his, with whatever Aaron Sorkin polished and added.

Around this time the New York Post gets wind of Sorkin's posting on what they call a "West Wing fan board" and how he was dissing writer Rick Cleveland. The Post published a little bit article about it. (This was long-held confirmation for some that Benjamin was indeed Sorkin because he confirmed it for the Post).

I will say that the Post and the few subsequent media outlets that commented on this incident really took the line that Sorkin was "demeaning" himself by posting insults on a fan board about one of his writers which why I see Donna's/C.J. reactions to Josh's fumblings on the Lemonlymon board as an insult. Because it’s essentially the New York Post's line of reasoning "Why is writer Aaron Sorkin hanging out on a fan site [read: hoi polloi] insulting his writers?" If you want another good example of that attitude check out deborah's review of a long-ago Talk magazine article about this entire incident.

In any case I feel the C.J./Josh scene is probably a mini-recreation of what happened to Sorkin when the New York Post revealed his postings. Both Sorkin and Cleveland show up on the boards one more time to patch things up. Sorkin says he's sorry, says Six Feet Under is a great show. Cleveland accepts his apology. Sorkin also says basically what C.J. says to Josh: that they're not "allowing" him to post anymore and they're monitoring his computer so he won't be on anymore.

That Really Bad 3rd Season of West Wing

Time passes. The third season happens. Here's where everyone's free to differ but I really think the third season is where the "fans" (or just the TwoP posters) lost some of the love for the show. Recall that 9/11 happened, Sorkin got busted for drug use and also got a divorce. So it wasn't a great transition from seasons 2 to 3. Also season 3 started off with that excretable episode "Isaac and Ishmael" which deborah the TwoP recapper really hated (it’s not like she was the only one). The other thing I remember about that time period is this is where the "anti-female sexism" threads really took off. I think there was at least five incarnations of the thread because the board moderators had to keep locking them they got so heated. So anyway, I'm just laying the groundwork that the relationship between the TwoP recappers and even many of the posters had changed greatly from the happy worship of seasons 1 & 2 to season 3. TwoP posters and also deborah the recapper were a lot more critical of the show Sorkin was putting out.

So one day out of the blue Aaron Sorkin (again as “Benjamin”) pops back on the TwoP boards. He makes a joke that they are changing his computer and so the locks are temporarily off but they will be back on in a "few hours." He basically spends the post thanking people who are happy with his work and saying to those who don't like it "well there are other things on TV to watch." He specifically says of deborah "She doesn't seem to like the show very much so I don't know why she watches." (Which Wing Chun, a Twop founder, pipes up saying "she watches because we pay her to do so," and deborah agrees saying..."if I wasn't being paid to recap...")

I think Sorkin posts about twice in this reappearance. The last post saying:

I and everyone else here are, honestly, thrilled that there are these fan sites where strangers get together and talk about the show and like the show/don't like the show (I’d prefer if you liked the show) but you ought to disabuse yourselves of the notion that what we do is debate a point and then declare a winner. We're just telling our little stories and doing our lame jokes. And hoping you'll keep tuning in.

Those of you who have watched the episode can probably recognize the sentiment expressed is pretty much what he had Laura Dern's character (who was the U.S. Poet Laureate) say about her own poetry! But there's a few things really wrong with having that character say such a sentiment and for Sorkin himself to say it. Consider that Sorkin is talking politics on his show and using real world examples. His characters aren't having discussions about nothing. Fiction matters. Rightly or wrongly people learn from fictional TV shows. (And I say this as someone who invested $60,000 to earn a master’s degree studying The Daily Show). This is why some of us posters felt strongly about how he treated real world subjects, such as muslims and the Middle East. It's the very reason cultural critics talk about TV shows and movies that deal with real problems. Because people learn about the world from what is reflected in TV, even moreso about obscure or slightly known political events. (How much does the average person really know about the landmine treaty -- a real issue but badly disguised-- discussed in the episode.) But when Sorkin later put that line into the mouth of a character... Well I think Shack's recap from TwoP made the case of what's really wrong than I can:

I want to give this whole episode an F based just on Tabatha's speech. The fact that I don't, I guess, is proof that I'm still willing to give Aaron Sorkin more leeway than I am others. I remember Sorkin making that comment about artists before, and it took putting it into the mouth of somebody who was supposed to be America's most influential poet before I realized how awful and wrong it is. A person who cares only about captivating his audience isn't an artist at all -- he's an entertainer. The truth is the foundation of every artist's work. An artist captivates his audience in the way he interprets the truth, even as he bends our perceptions of it to include impossible, supernatural elements, even as he sets it to music, even as he turns it inside out, paints it with the perspectives all out of kilter, and covers it in elephant poo -- even as he denies that there is even such a thing as truth. All the dead artists in the world are collectively spinning in their graves at the suggestion that, like Sorkin, they were all just telling their "little stories." Those little stories, and paintings, and plays, and symphonies, and poems, and yes, television shows have shaped every single culture on this planet, and in some cases, are all we have left of them. If Sorkin is afraid to be a part of that because he's afraid of getting it wrong, or afraid that people won't understand, or if he's just afraid to -- oh, I don't know -- grow a pair and take his critical lumps just like every other artist and learn from it, then fine. We lose a talented mind with an interesting view of the truth, and he loses the right to call himself an artist. But I will not just sit here and say nothing as he tries to drag the rest of the art world down with him. Hundreds of artists throughout the world and across time have been censored, imprisoned, exiled, and executed, and it wasn't because they were simply trying to "captivate" people. It happens because, to put it in Sorkinese, sometimes an artist stands up, too. And they accept the consequences when their perceptions of the truth get them in trouble because they were wrong, or more frequently, because they were right. And finally, nothing an artist produces is as captivating as the way he shows us his truth. Nothing.

As you see, Laura Dern's final speech to Toby is a much-improved version of Sorkin's final post, there's Artic Radar which doesn't have to be Twop-centered necessarily but it probably about the total sum of Sorkin's relationship with his fans. It feels like it was written in the aftermath of U.S. Poet or his comments on the boards and the episode is Sorkin throwing his hands up saying "I can't deal with you guys, you're crazy." In "Artic Radar" there is a subplot where a White House temp worker wears a Star Trek pin. I'll quote from deborah's recap here:

Suddenly Josh hears Janice's voice saying, "I'm not obsessed, you know." Josh: "I'm sorry?" Janice: "I'm not obsessed. I'm just a fan and I care."

Josh asks her name again. She tells him. He comes into her cubicle and sits down next to her desk.

He says, "I'm a fan. I'm a sports fan, I'm a music fan and I'm a Star Trek fan. All of them. But here's what I don't do -- tell me if any of this sounds familiar: 'Let's list our ten favorite episodes. Let's list our least favorite episodes. Let's list our favorite galaxies. Let's make a chart to see how often our favourite galaxies appear in our favourite episodes. What Romulan would you most like to see coupled with a Cardassian and why? Let's spend a weekend talking about Romulans falling in love with Cardassians and then let's do it again.'"

Janice listens to all this with a slightly hurt look on her face. Josh lays down the law: "That's not being a fan. That's having a fetish. And I don't have a problem with that, except you can't bring your hobbies in to work, okay?"

So according to Sorkin all his crazy Twop fans are "fetists." Yet this is a man who wrote an entire show that was about a show where people that do nothing but talk about sports. Not play sports themselves, mind you. Talk about them.

Anyway that's the long history. Sorkin left in the fifth season, the show moves one. FYI, I don't think Sorkin's a *bad* guy (2010 perspective, now I think he’s an ass) but I do think he at least had a bit of an ego about himself and his show after winning so much praise in the first and second seasons (just read the recap to Two Cathedrals and see how much deborah used to love his work) and it must have been very hard to walk into your favorite place expecting nothing but praise and now getting criticism. Especially when you're a drug addict who was still in denial at the time. This is just the nature of online communications and I imagine if you're going to produce creative work, let alone TV shows, you have to reach some kind of internal peace about dealing with criticism specifically online criticism. As Shack said "grow a pair and take [your] critical lumps just like every other artist and learn from it."

Sorkin did return to TwoP only one other time that I know of. Around the time of John Spencer's funeral he posted something kind about fans and that he would read some TwoP posts at the funeral. (He did it through an assistant's account, but it was indeed him.) As a final note, although there never was any confirmation, many of us at TwoP thought that the discussion about feminism in "Night Five" was also a direct rebuttal to the "Anti-woman Sexism" threads on TwoP. I've forgotten about the timing of it, but there was some way to connect the discussion on the boards, Sorkin's appearences + the Rick Cleveland episode and see it as a written rebuke to our discussions about the show. (Later the threads got even more heated after the show, but that's to be expected). Of course TwoP wasn't the only critics making the connections between "Sexism + Aaron Sorkin" on the West Wing at the time so it didn't have to be about TwoP specifically. Collectively these episodes do remind me of the movie "Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back" where their characters go across the country beating up people to wrote pissy message boards posts about them. This probably a good reason WHY people who write TV shows shouldn't come to TV message boards if they can't distance themselves from it (both the good and the bad).

UPDATE: I've essentially created a different version of these events, expanded a bit you might say, with a timeline. In the meantime I want to quote mjforty's post in the U.S. Poet thread because her memory is good and she was around during that period as well.

This is my problem with the lemonlyman.com plotline. It misrepresents what happened and actually makes Josh (Sorkin) look better than he should. There were two separate Sorkin blow-ups on these boards. The first one where he came in and attacked Rick Cleveland and the second one where he came in and attacked deborah and other posters. It was after "Night Five" aired and there was a lot of intense discussion about the sexual harrassment storyline. It had been an ongoing complaint with some posters and we even had a thread dedicated to what some perceived as the subtle sexism on the show. Sorkin had responded to some of these complaints before he stopped posting (after the Rick Cleveland episode) and a lot of what you saw in "Night Five" was similar to our discussion. This was also the episode that had Toby declaring "They'll like us when we win." which also brought about a lot of complaints about what some perceived as Sorkin's inability to grasp the Muslim/Middle East problems. So, yeah, we were having a lively discussion and there was definitely a good portion of people who strongly disagreed with the way sexual harrassment in the workplace and the nuances of solving the problems in the Middle East had been handled.

Enter benjamin. His post, had it been posted by any other poster, would have probably gotten him banned. It suggested that one poster should probably walk away from his computer/t.v. set and get outside more. It told deborah there were hundreds of other things to do at 9:00 p.m. on a Wednesday night and perhaps she consider doing them. It took to task people who couldn't see why he was not sexist. (For the record: no one was calling Sorkin sexist, just that there were some problems with the way certain situations and certain female characters were written).

When posters came to the defense of the people Sorkin went after, he backed down, apologizing. He had never really embraced the adage of "think twice, post once." But the fact is, that first post was actually kind of nasty, in parts. So, I guess, if you're going to call someone a muu-muu wearing, chain-smoking dictator, perhaps you should portray your alter-ego as something other than a hapless fool who didn't really understand the crazy bee-hive he had wandered into. That's the part the bugs me about that storyline, how Josh/Sorkin appears to be a passive victim, when in reality, Sorkin was as responsible for the craziness that rained down upon him as anyone else.

I didn't mind him poking fun at the posters. The truth is, we all do step over the line into obsessive/crazy/anal about minutae and it's mockworthy behavior when we do. But deborah was always very respectful of Sorkin and gave him a lot of leeway when he posted, letting him break rules that no one else could so that we could have the benefit of his posts. So it made me angry when he attacked her for, as far as I could see, the fact that she wasn't gushing over the mediocrity that was Season 3.

And, as far as I know, deborah has never publically commented on how she was portrayed in that episode. She didn't recap that episode and she didn't comment on the episode when it aired. What she said to Professor Frink in the privacy of her own home, I can only guess.

UPDATE II: 8/1/07, this is one of my most popular posts and I wanted to add that, at the time I wrote it I really thought Aaron Sorkin might have learned something about not writing personal grudges into his scripts. I thought maybe he had learned to "think twice, write once," especially about something that would one day be sold on DVDs.

Boy was I wrong! In Aaron Sorkin's follow up show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I don't think I've ever seen a network television series—not just a line or a character or even one subplot on a episode—but an entire series, more dedicated to settling personal scores.

Televisionwithoutpity has a pretty funny breakdown of all the characters on Studio 60 and who they are in real life to Sorkin. The website's recaps also spell out pretty effectively which part of Sorkin's personal history is his writing in which episode.

However I was surprised that Sorkin even seemed to dredge up the old tiff with Rick Cleveland by having a character called "Ricky Tahoe" (See Cleveland is a city and Tahoe is a city...isn't Aaron clever?) who happens to be a hack writer who isn't as talented as his boss, the Aaron Sorkin-stand in, Matt Albie.

In anycase what little I wrote about Studio 60 is here and here.

UPDATE: 11/29/07 Thanks to ww_renaissance you can now read for yourself the full text of Aaron Sorkin's exchange with Rick Cleveland on Twop. She has more on her site.

Post #1

mijorty, You got it wrong. It's understandable, but you got it wrong. On most TV staffs, stories are pitched, broken and outlined by a group, then assigned to the various writers on the staff, then polished by the show runner. That's not the way it works here. I write the scripts with the enormous help of a staff that provides research and kicks ideas around with me as well. It's like a new play being written every week. They work really hard and do a great job and they're all going to write their own scripts one day, so by way of a gratuity, I give them each a Story by credit on a rotating basis. That credit comes with money.

That said, they're paid as if they were writing scripts (and some of them have producer titles as well--simply based on what they were getting at their last job.) We're under a tremendous budget crunch here. I know it seems, with the success of the show, like we should have all the money in the world, but it doesn't work like that. People were let go in all departments; grips, gaffers, props, hair and make-up, set dressing, post-production ... And the cases of a few writers (whom I'm very fond of) their contracts called for them to get bumps which would have been very difficult to justify given their job descriptions. Their contracts also give us the option to not pick up their option, which Tommy, John and I didn't want to do given their loyal service to the show and our personal friendships with them. So we asked them if they'd be willing to stay on at their current salaries, supplemented by the money they'd get from story credits. In no way a violation of the Writers' Guild contract, in spirit or otherwise. John, I assure you, would never do that.

The two who left are both gainfully employed on other shows. In fact there was a bidding war over their services. Those who stayed seem very happy they did.

All of this was explained by any number of people to Bernie Weinraub at the New York Times. Bernie Weinraub, it would seem, is very casual about the truth.

Finally, on a vain and selfish note: In the first season, I was doing both The West Wing and Sports Night at the same time and I wanted to try seeing if The West Wing could run like a normal TV show. I gave a staffer named Rick Cleveland a script assignment. He wrote a script called "A White House Christmas" wherein the First Lady's cat trips a Secret Service alarm. I can't much else except mention was made of a business card found in an old coat of Toby's that he'd donated to Good Will. I threw out Rick's script and wrote "In Excelces Deo." Because Rick had worked for months on his, I gave him, rather than a Story by credit, a co-written by credit and put his name ahead of mine. For my script, he received a Humanitas nomination, an Emmy Award and a Writers' Guild Award. Every Emmy nominee gets a letter from Don Mischer, the producer of the telecast, very clearly saying that only one person is allowed to speak when accepting. After that person is done, the orchestra will play you off. Rick could'ce done the St. Crispin's Day speech that night for I cared. It wasn't my call.

This, too, was explained to Bernie.

At the end of the first season, Rick was fired. Not by me and for economic reasons. It was by John Wells and it was for lack of performance. He was then hired by Gideon's Crossing, where he was fired by Paul Attanassio for the same reason. - Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin

Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
by Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin
June 26, 2001

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Post #2

Hey, Gang. Rick Cleveland here. First off, for anyone who's interested, my draft of the script -- I wrote three -- is available in the WGA archive. I'm pretty sure anyone who stops by can read it -- if not I'd be glad to make it available. It's called "A White House Christmas." Benjamin got that much right. The "A" story is mine -- not just the idea -- all the way down to the name of the homeless Korean War veteran, Walter Huffnagel. Even Toby's visit to his brother, although I didn't make him retarded -- Aaron did. Other stuff is also mine -- the new millennium stuff in the teaser, as well as the stuff about CJ's secret service nickname -- which was my wife's idea, yes. Aaron's a great writer, and he did a great job rewriting the script -- but he didn't write it alone. And he didn't "give" me a Written by credit -- and what galled me on Emmy night wasn't that he didn't let me speak -- it was that he ignored me completely. For the record, the writing credit on the script was indeed arbitrated by the WGA -- they decided my work warranted a Co-Writer credit on the teleplay. Also, for the record, every script written the show's first year by staff members was automatically submitted for arbitration -- at the request of John Wells -- as a measure of protection for us -- to keep Aaron from poaching or cannibalizing scripts to the point where he wouldn't have to give credit where credit was/is due. As for being fired for lack of performance, that's also not true -- at least as far as I know. The fact that Aaron, John and Tommy submitted the script that I co-wrote for Emmy, Humanitas and WGA Award consideration validates my contribution to the show -- at least I'd like to think it does. Also, I didn't get fired off "Gideon's Crossing." In closing, I'm very proud to inform you all that I'm currently working on "Six Feet Under." It's a great show, you should check it out. - Rick Cleveland

Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
by Rick Cleveland
July 6, 2001

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Post #3

Boy, I'd kinda like to end this. So Rick? If you're out there...?

I and everyone else appreciate the contribution you made to the episode. It was crucial. I was dead wrong to imply otherwise. I deeply regret not having thanked you that night. It was nothing more than nerves. As for your not being allowed to speak, I'm sorry about that too and I wish you'd been able to, but that wasn't my call, it was the decision of Don Mischer. I thanked those involved with the pilot (really not just the pilot, but the production of the series in general) because I wasn't just the co-writer of that episode, I was also the creator and executive producer of the series, and I had no way of knowing if we'd be back up there again that night.

You wrote what I felt was an unduly nasty piece in the Writers' Guild magazine, and after I read it, I called you and I apologized. I then made arrangements for you not only to speak when accepting the Writers' Guild Award, but for you to have the entire stage to yourself that night.

The whole unfortunate incident was dragged out once again when Bernie Weinraub wrote his piece in the New York Times. I reacted too quickly to what I felt was an egregiously unfair characterization of the way writers are treated on The West Wing. Further, I'm remarkably and stupidly naive about the internet, and never imagined my response to a poster would be picked up by Slate or anyone else. The episode we did together remains one of the proudest moments of this series and of my career. I enjoyed every day of the year we worked together.

Six Feet Under is a wonderful show, I'm sure you're proud of it. I wish you nothing less than what you deserve: Health, Happiness and another Emmy.

Aaron Sorkin

Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
by Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin
July 8, 2001
[Sidenote, TwoP used to be called MightyBigTV]
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Post #4

Aaron,

Thank you for being such a mensch about putting what I hope will be a dignified end to this mess. The year I spent working with you on the show -- and on our episode -- remains one of the proudest experiences of my career as well. And just so you know, I never spoke with Weinraub or anyone else at the Times, nor would I have felt the need to. I hope you guys sweep the Emmy Awards once again this year. And best of luck with the third season...

Best wishes,
Rick C. - Rick Cleveland

Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
by Rick Cleveland
July 8, 2001

Super Valentine's Day Chocolate Edition

Well its Valentine's Day and speaking of chocolate and "love" I find it pretty interesting that for 25 years hershey's kisses kisses were just plain chocolate. Weren't they invented in the '70s. Then sometime in the '90s they added white chocolate "Hugs." (I think they're still around). Now there are:

1. Hershey's Kisses (plain)
2. Almond
3. Dark
4. Caramel
5. Peanut Butter
6. Hugs (white chocolate)

Forgive me if there's any I'm forgetting. Maybe they'll have a peanut version soon. There's also a "Kissables" which are basically M & Ms but in hershey kiss form. I actually like them a lot. But I can't rightly add them to the list. I think I remember hearing an Adam Corrolla rant on Loveline about the issue of candy branding. That basically instead of "inventing" new candy bars confectioner's are now basically adding an old recognizable brand name to a new combination. Like "Kissables" instead simply calling them "buttons" or whatever. They've done that with Snickers Almond and Snickers Crunch. The new Take 5 (which I haven't tried) is one of the few "new" candy bars to get an original name.

I just wanted to add that I finally made a blog post that had a topic (chocolate) , theme and title to match. Yay, me!

UPDATE: Apparently I have missed quite a few other Hershey Kiss variations. There's also a new Cherry Cordial and Dulce de Leche versions as well.