Excerpts:
Citing Los Angeles Times writers Maria Elena Fernandez and Scott Collins, [Sorkin] admitted that he took great issue with some of their stories, along with the piece by Deborah Netburn on Christmas Day that suggested most comedy writers in Hollywood don't take kindly to the show. "She interviewed [a member of the Los Angeles improv group] Employee of the Month, and if you look at their web site, you'll find that most of them are unemployed," he insists. "And we were nominated for a Writer's Guild Award as well.”
"We live in the age of amateurs, and we can all go on the Internet and find people to say mean things about any show," he says. "But everybody's voice ought not to be equal."
I have to admit I take some exception, for pathetically obvious reasons, to his implication that if you are an unemployed writer or a blogger, your opinion means virtually nothing.
I'm suddenly reminded of when James Cameron chose to go after, in print, one of the only critics who didn't think Titantic was a triumph. Here he was, he'd made this big movie that was both staggeringly popular and praised by most of the critics, and he'd won the Academy Award. He just looked like a thin-skinned whiner sniping at a minority opinion.
Similarly, I think Sorkin, if not demeans himself, then certainly shows himself in a less than good light when he stoops to flinging mud at people who don't have his opportunities (or, probably, his talent).
I know at least some (if not most) of his ire is directed not at the unemployed and/or blog writers, but at mainstream reporters who cite them as sources. But my larger point is this: The more my faith that anything will ever happen for me as a writer wavers, the lower my tolerance drops for people like Cameron.
Or, you'll understand how much it bums me to say, Sorkin.
They get to tell their stories to a larger audience than Charles Dickens ever knew, they have financial security and creative independence.
What the fuck do they have to whine about?
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