I Hate Aaron Sorkin

Thoughts on the Regime's Chief Revisionist

This is a Carousel guest post from

T.R. Hudson

, editor of

The Double Dealer

To watch an Aaron Sorkin show is to experience propaganda. Of course, all media is propaganda, so let’s be more honest than the man himself and call this essay Anti-Aaron Sorkin propaganda. Because, what’s the only difference between, say, Howard Zinn and Aaron Sorkin? Aaron Sorkin is a better writer.

In fifty years, if the liberal project lasts, as he hopes it does, Sorkin’s writing will survive as a cringey propaganda poster illustrating the absurdity of a dominant regime. He exists to smooth out a narrative so it can be regurgitated at parties and Thanksgiving. No one reads, no one pays attention in class, people don’t even pay attention at the movies. History is something we agree upon. And the average American still does, barely, agree upon Sorkin’'s version. What version is that?

“America isn’t the greatest country on Earth. But it can be.”As long as the Democrats are in charge for forever.

A Few Good Men… And A Bunch of Assholes

Sorkin’s big break was his play A Few Good Men, later adapted into a film starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, directed by Liberal Meathead Rob Reiner. The film is based loosely on a hazing allegation made at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which lead to the hospitalization of one marine and the arrest of several perpetrators, all of whom were acquitted at trial.

The film goes in a different direction, one more critical of the military. Jack Nicholson plays marine Colonel Nathan Jessup, in charge of the base at Guantanamo Bay. He’s old school. He carries the tradition of the marines, not for the sake of those traditions alone, but because they have a proven track record of effectiveness. Guantanamo Bay is, after all, American soil in a hostile country.

Private William Santiago is a substandard marine. Constantly falling behind in runs, he is told that this is due to heat exhaustion. Doctors diagnose a “malingerer,” a slacker who feigns illness in order to get out of doing his job. This explanation does not satisfy Santiago and he begins a letter writing campaign outside his chain of command in order to get transferred off base. He sweetens the deal by claiming that he can provide testimony on an unsanctioned shooting, a major violation that would spell trouble for Jessup’s command.

When Santiago’s letter is read aloud by Jessup, Sorkin tells you who his villain is. The caustic sarcasm comes on thick.

But, Aaron, what responsibility does the commander of a military base have? Especially one in a hostile country? Sorkin expects the audience to take for granted that Cuba is a nothing-burger. The script was written at the end of the Cold War and the film was released in 1992, four years before the Global War on Terror started. “It’s the end of history, so don’t take yourself so seriously, Colonel.”

Sorkin is a good propagandist, which means he authentically discharges counterarguments percolating in the brains of his viewer. He gives you a legitimate reason why Santiago should stay, but it’s been painted black so the audience can dismiss it outright. Jessup has a responsibility to America, to the Marine Corps, to his men, and to Santiago. When Jessup says he should surrender Cuba, he’s being hyperbolic, but what’s to stop others from following Santiago’s example? Order and discipline keep peace. Chaos begets chaos.

An implicit order for a “Code Red” is given, though never outright stated, a flaw in the film, but we’ll get to that. Code Red is an anachronistic term for hazing, a male bonding practice since the first hunting party was gathered. Hazing is a big no-no in the military these days, in no small part because of the popularity of A Few Good Men. Our feminized military, the drop in standards and competence, the lack of leadership, the dismal retention and recruiting numbers, can all be traced back to a lack of order and discipline. It’s all the same longhouse. Officers are managers, not leaders, passing the buck up the chain of command. Authority comes with responsibility. Take away a leader’s authority, and watch how he absconds with responsibility.

Meanwhile, our protagonist, Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise), is the appointed to defend the two marines charged with the murder of Santiago. They performed the Code Red and, when Santiago had a bad reaction to a sock being stuffed in his mouth, he suffocated and died. Kaffee is the exact opposite of Jessup. He’s cool, indifferent to the military, he doesn’t even know what a fenceline is. Kaffee’s schtick going straight to plea bargains. He never goes to trial. He’s not a moral guy…until a bunch of fascists push him just a little too far. You see this same pattern with the protagonists of Charlie Wilson’s War and The Newsroom.

Before Kaffee first meets with Jessup, he’s warned that the marines at Gitmo are fanatics. “About what?” he asks. “Being marines” is the answer. This is supposed to be a dig, instead of the response a citizen hopes to hear about his military. Very tricky, Aaron.

Kaffee unravels the cover up in order to defend his clients and unseat Jessup from command. In reality, Jessup is correct in his methods but wrong in his coverup. That he felt the need to cover anything up at all is unfortunate. Military discipline has always been enforced with tactics that were not fair or nice or dignified. Baffling for a commander to be relieved of command for adequately preparing his men for battle. Were Santiago simply ordered to walk into a minefield and killed, no fuss would he made. Of course, Sorkin would’ve had to serve in the military to understand this.

At the end of the film, Jessup admits to ordering the Code Red and is arrested. The jury finds the two marines on trial guilty for Santiago’s death. This is stupid for two reasons. First, they obeyed orders from a senior leader. It’s not up to them to decide which orders are valid or not. Since the My Lai massacre, the military has been pounding into troops’ heads the idea that they can only follow “lawful orders.” This is pants on head retarded because no one knows the Uniformed Code of Military Justice well enough to determine what’s lawful and what isn’t. The UCMJ is like the HR booklet companies’ give to new hires. It’s not for you to actually read, it’s for the organization to cover their ass. The only people who know the UCMJ are the lawyers who argue it.

Jessup is shrewd enough to cover up his role in Santiago’s death and ruthless enough to let his men take the fall for him. He ordered Santiago’s Lieutenant, Kendrick, to train Santiago. He gave himself plausible deniability. If he were the villain, why not let Kendrick take the fall? Kendrick is loyal enough, which is what makes him so repugnant to the Kaffee and therefore the audience. Yet for Sorkin, the existence of an entire organization matters less than the existence of one marine. What military could survive under such pretense? And before you say, “it’s just a movie,” realize that this movie has had real impacts on our real military.

The Worst Wing

When I was in college, I took a course on American government. We were assigned to watch an episode of The West Wing. Our TA described The West Wing as “a love letter to government service,” but we can infer she meant “a love letter to the Democratic Party.” Sorkin writes President Bartlet as a heritage American from New Hampshire (a direct relation to a signer of the Declaration of Independence), an academic (he taught economics at Notre Dame received the Nobel Prize), a devout Catholic (he shouts at God in Latin), and above all else, an American Patriot (He’s not afraid to blow up brown people all around the world). A Clintonian skinsuit appealing to the middle while driving constantly leftward.

The show started as Clinton-apologia then, as the Bush administration unfolded, became “look what we could have had instead” propaganda. There’s even a 9/11 episode that aired three weeks after the attack, the most important lesson of which is, of course, that American racism is bad.

The West Wing conversation formula plays out like this 100% of the time:

Good guy: Emotional argument by competent actor.

Bad guy: Boring practical rebuttal.

Good guy: Muh American(liberal) ideals.

Bad Guy: I’m a prick and I hate marginalized groups.

Good guy: Snarky comment.

Bad Guy: *commits Seppuku*

President Jed Bartlet never lets the bona fides that Sorkin assigns him get in the way of the Neoliberal march towards the end of history. He’s Catholic, but not one of those catholics. He’s pro-choice. He takes every opportunity to brow beat evangelical Christians. He’s one of the good ones. He’s a heritage American, but he knows diversity is our strength. He’s an economist and he knows Keynesian spending and Modern Monetary Theory are the way to stimulate economic growth. He’s a patriot, he calls a turkey hotline on Thanksgiving and lies about his illnesses to protect the country (noble lies, unsurprisingly, being one of Sorkin’s favorite tropes). His wife’s a doctor. Where have I seen this before?

Martin Sheen, who played Jed Bartlet, said the character was inspired by Bill Clinton, but it’s hard not to make comparisons to Joe Biden. Biden’s former Press Secretary Jen Psaki compared working for the President to The West Wing. Biden’s administration is full of progressives who feel hampered by the President’s relatively conservative stances on issues. They’re Mao Zedong, he’s Deng Xiaoping. Both fictional presidents have debilitating illnesses that should bar them from office, kept under wraps, like their lies, for the greater good. There was, however, never a scene with Martin Sheen showering with one of the actresses who played his daughter, so I guess we can deduct points from Sorkin’s prognostication skills there.

The series ends with the election of “Not-Obama,” who defeats principled conservative “Not McCain.” Oh, if we could only cut taxes. Thats the only opinion a Republican can hold that should differ from a Democrat. That’s how you get marked as “one of the good ones.”

One episode has a whole slate of “good ones.” The President’s daughter is kidnapped by Islamic terrorists. Bartlet can’t think straight so he invokes the 25th Amendment. There’s no VP because he’s been shit-canned for being a little too JFK. The baton is passed to John Goodman, who plays the Republican Speaker of the House. He and his staff of good ones act presidential, decisively retrieving the President’s daughter and making sure not to ruffle any feathers while doing so. When one of Bartlet’s team questions the motives of these sneaky Republicans, all they can say is how awestruck they are by Bartlet stepping down. Only a craven Machiavellian schemer would use a tragedy to forward his own agenda. I’ll give Sorkin this, he understands the weakness and impotence of the modern GOP.

Afghanistan: The Prequel

For more “one of the good ones” action, we turn to Charlie Wilson’s war, in which Tom Hanks plays Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson, who smuggles weapons into Afghanistan in its fight against the Soviet Union. The brave Mujahideen have repelled the evil empire’s attacks with Enfield rifles and trained donkeys. The humanitarian crisis is so bad that the combined forces of America, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, and Israel(??) come together to beat the Soviets and bring freedom back to the oppressed Afghans.

Charlie’s a cool cowboy type from a district in Texas. Never mind that he admits democracy is a sham and that he’s beholden to his donor class in New York, mostly Jews. He’s a carefree guy who likes to bed the ladies and hires only women so he can sleep with them, always consensual, of course. Don’t look into the part with the businessman’s passed out daughter. He tucked her into bed. That’s all, we promise. It was the 80s, it happened all the time.

Anyway, Julia Roberts is a crazed Evangelical Christian bedded by Charlie Wilson. She’s got Mrs. Jellyby syndrome, caring more about the plight of the Pakistani and Afghan people than Americans. She has out of wedlock relations, but brow beats Charlie’s female staff for being sluts. Worst of all, she’s on a Crusade for God to defeat the Atheist commies and hopes to bring Christianity to the Middle East. Someone stop this bitch!

Luckily, the CIA has Philip Seymour Hoffman, who runs the Afghan War from Virginia. He’s a gruff, tell-it-like-it-is truth seeker who hates commies, but also hates anyone who dares mention God in his presence. See, the problem with our intervention in Afghanistan is we let “the crazies” take over after the Soviets left. It was fine to arm the radicals, train them, propagandize them, get other Muslim nations to help whip them into a frenzy, but the huge grievous mistake was allowing them to run their society with God at the center. We needed to build schools so they could be just like us, and our failure to do so is Sorkin’s cautionary lesson in Charlie Wilson’s War. If those pesky, backward Republicans hadn’t stopped the money from coming in to Afghanistan, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened. If the CIA didn’t have to cow-tow to religious fundamentalists, Afghanistan would be a utopia based on the fundamental rights of man, enlightenment values, and Starbucks. Sorkin genuinely believes this.

I’m Going to Kill Baseball

Moneyball is the story of the Oakland Athletics, one of the poorest franchises in the league. See, baseball is America’s pastime. At least, it used to be. Baseball is like America. The plucky, weird underdog has to innovate because the bad, wealthy favorites have rigged the game in their favor.

So they scienced the shit out of baseball. Using Sabremetrics, the A’s fill their roster with bargain bin players. David Justice is old, but he gets on base. Chad Bradford pitches weird, but he strikes dudes out. Scott Hatteburg can’t play First, but he can get walks. Art Howe, the manager of the team, is an old fuddy duddy who can’t wrap his head around all these numbers and wants to play the game “the right way.” Same with most of the scouts the A’s employ. The general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), is a loose cannon, but just what the A’s need to win.

Forget about Miguel Tejada (2002 MVP), Jermaine Dye, and Eric Chavez. They’re bit players who barely contributed to the team. Forget about their starting pitchers Barry Zito (2002 Cy Young Winner), Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson. It was Chad Bradford who won them all their games with his weird submarine pitching style. Of course, Sorkin would need to actually watch baseball to know this.

The lesson of Moneyball is that a band of misfits can succeed if they use their unique abilities to overshadow the more conventionally talented members of the team. We learn that the plucky underdog Boston Red Sox used Moneyball to win the 2004 World Series. As everyone knows, the Red Sox don’t have money either, and didn’t back up dump trucks of cash to sign players, including former Oakland Athletic Johnny Damon, whose replacement was supposedly the catalyst for Moneyball. But let’s not think about these things.

Hindsight 2012

In the Summer of 2012, “The Newsroom” came to HBO. Republican newscaster Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, is an empty suit centrist. He reads the news at night and people like his unbiased approach and aww shucks demeanor. Then, one day at a panel on a college campus, he’s asked a question about why America is “the greatest country in the world.” The liberal on the panel answers “diversity and opportunity,” while the conservative says “freedom and freedom.” Will McAvoy says “The New York Jets” to much laughter. He then repeats the answers of the liberal and conservative, showing he’s an unbiased centrist yet again. But then, a ghost from his past appears. His ex-girlfriend, a British expat who clearly doesn’t think much of America shows him a whiteboard that says “It’s not” followed by “But it can be.”

We’re then treated to Sorkin’s Two Minutes Hate through the mouth of McAvoy, which Sorkin surely imagined as his career mic drop moment. With few jabs at the left and some haymakers at the right, Will sheds his centrist cocoon to show the liberal butterfly he, and all of us, are truly meant to be. His problem with liberals is that they are nerds who always lose because of their pet projects like the NEA. He expects better from them. Meanwhile, he lays into the dipshit republican because his answer was freedom. Will then goes on to list a bunch of countries with real freedom. Canada, the UK, Germany, France and Belgium. Since Covid, we can see what a naive fool Sorkin truly was.

But back in 2012, Sorkin via Jeff Daniels angrily announces America leads the world only in incarceration rates, people who believe in angels, and defense spending. He blames millennials for their ignorance and pines for the good old days when America stood for something, goshdarnit. They “stood up for what was right,” by passing moral laws like the Civil Rights Act and declaring war on poverty. The list goes on and on. Kennedy’s New Frontier in a nutshell. Don’t think about Johnson or Carter.

After schooling us on how awesome Boomer America was, he gives fool credit to journalists. Ah, yes. Remember when Edward Murrow stood up to McCarthyism and stopped the HUAC from finding all the commies in the State Department? Remember when Walter Cronkite went full steam ahead on Vietnam, then declared the war couldn’t be won after the Tet Offensive? Remember Woodward and Bernstein? Wait, wasn’t Bob Woodward a fed? Never mind that, feds can be “one of the good ones” too. Who can forget the brave journalists who lied to America about invading Iraq? Twice?

The rest of the show amounts to what you might call “hindsight porn.” You idiots didn’t you know the Japanese were covering up a nuclear disaster after a Tsunami? Here’s what really happened with the BP oil spill. The Koch brothers are the most evil humans in US history. That’s why you can mock them with impunity. Let’s not forget that time Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden. Thanks to hindsight, we can make fun of all the networks that got it wrong. Stupid Fox News, don't you know killing Qaddafi would destabilize North Africa. Who would be that stupid?

It’s All So Tiresome

I don’t know how much of this stuff Aaron Sorkin believes and how much he wants to believe. He plays his role for the system as a kind of court historian, but for the layman. He doesn’t need to convince anyone that he’s right and much like Jon Stewart, who uses comedy as a shield from criticism, Sorkin hides behind a creative license that allows him to avoid bothering with the pesky truth.

But here it is: people don’t read anymore. The more eyes on a Sorkin product, the more NPCs will tell you why America isn’t the greatest country in the world.