March 01, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Peggy Noonan offers a fair-minded
Peggy Noonan offers a fair-minded take on the Aaron Sorkin debacle. Her piece makes the point that conservatives shouldn't be outraged, since he's flying his true colors proudly . . . and indeed, the people most upset by this seem to be the people at the network, who are treating him like an 8-year old who accidentally blabbed a family secret.
But the best part of the piece is this:
A note on Aaron's art. If he screened out the propaganda on his own it would not only make it easier on a lot of us, it would put him that much closer to being a dramatist of the stature of a William Inge or Tennessee Williams or Paddy Chayevsky. With a first-rate artist you can often guess his politics. Walker Percy, who wrote about the secret brokenness and lostness of our selves, which is to say our souls, was probably in many ways a conservative. Tennessee Williams with his great tugging heart toward the outsider, the outrider, the one who doesn't fit, was probably a liberal. Eugene O'Neill, if he had lived 20 years longer, through the 1970s, would probably have completed the transit from socialist to right-wing nut.
Or so I imagine.But I have to guess. Their work doesn't bludgeon me with the political views of the dramatist (or, in Percy's case, the novelist.) Their work stands, speaks and stays, untethered to passing political views and positions. Which is one reason they're great.
His show would be better if Aaron Sorkin tried to be great.
I confess I don't watch the show; one-sided political commentary doesn't make interesting TV for me. But I admit that I might find it compelling if it weren't such a polemic. Posted by Jane Galt at March 1, 2002 12:49 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links