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| Fifth Column |
| Sorkin bitches about "blacklist" |
| 2001-10-26 |
Hollywood wunderkind Aaron Sorkin says America's surge in patriotism has a dark side: It has unleashed a "Blacklist" against those who dissent! "It's happening all over again," the WEST WING creatorexecutiveproducerwriter said this week in Los Angeles during a jam session "Post Terror America: Hollywood Reacts" at the Occidental Policy Forum. Sorkin: "What is important is dissent... Bill Maher has been getting a pounding because on his television program he said something that some found controversial. It was a conservative talk show host in Houston that got the ball rolling down the mountain, and then sponsors began removing their advertising from the show, and now ABC, the network that he’s on, is saying that they may not do the show. We’ve heard this song before, right? In the fifties there was a blacklist, and it ruined lives. If you’re anything like me, when you watch any of the dozens of films that have been made about the blacklist, you look at that and think, my God, if I could only transport myself back in time to this period and knock a couple of heads together and say, are you out of your mind?" Sorkin continued: "Well, we’re there, right now. It’s happening all over again. I think it’s right now when it’s most important that there be dissent. When the patriotism police should be kept at bay and that people understand that Bill Maher is every bit as much an American as you or I and let’s remember the values that we are protecting in the first place. My feeling is that those us who aren’t going to be driving the tanks in Afghanistan really what we can do for the war effort is to make sure that if you don’t like what Bill Maher has to say, change the channel. Write him a letter. But he shouldn’t be taken off the air. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer should not get up and say Americans need to watch what they say..." Well, actually what's important is the government defending the country and citizens supporting the government unless it's wrong. Dissent for dissent's sake is another name for reflexive stupidity. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |