Alex Pareene thinks, "Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals."
He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy. Sorkin has spent years fueling the delusional self-regard of well-educated liberals. He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic “everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid” attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him.
First of all, people don't hate liberals. A lot of people hate "liberals" -- the stigmatized word and the absurd commie pinko caricature painted by the right-wing media. But in single-issue poll after single-issue poll, a majority or plurality of Americans are liberal. Americans are pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-green energy, pro-taxing the rich, pro-same sex marriage, and on down the line.
And, secondly, people who do hate liberals might hate them less if they/we were more like Sorkin and his characters: forceful, self-confident, lightning fast with a brutally salient point and occasionally gregarious (see President Bartlet). Instead of standing our ground and seizing the initiative by constructing killer frames and message discipline, we navel-gaze and wonder why people hate liberals. We worry that being Sorkin-ish might be too over-the-top or unfair or smug instead of just selling what we believe with laser precision and without letting up no matter how much the opposition screeches and pees their big-boy pants.