Comfort Zones
Aaron Sorkin has been a lot of things to a lot of people. He's been a lot of things to me. A mystery, a hero, a champion of the bare ideal of character-based storytelling on major network television. He brought me Sports Night, which still to this day is the only half hour comedy that can bring tears to my eyes. He has been painting the walls lately with stories about his newest offering, the hour long drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
I was in love with the whole conceit of it within ten minutes. I bit my teeth into the writing, the acting, the staging and the presentation before I knew what was going on, and it was over. I'm predisposed to a gut-punching love of this sort of television. Doomed to watch. Even now, as I gnash my teeth and feel the whirling dervish dance of violence loom over my restrained action, I am clamoring for more. Drooling. Wanting.
This is the problem. Sorkin wants dearly to be the trumpeter of the gap-bridging phenomenon we are all a part of. He would cut his fingers off to be a part of the coming together that we see between Red State and Blue State. He is a merger pariah. A shill for the new democracy. As such, it is his holy, faithful goal to show the beauty of the rural mentality, the truth and intelligence and wit within the conservative ideology. And in his most recently aired foray into this noble-but-dangerous mission, he painted himself into a corner.
I feel that there is an argument between the Republican ideals and their Democratic counterparts. Fiscal conservativism of the sort that ennobles the capitalist notion of fairness and equal opportunity is still very alive in this country. So despite my own liberal leanings, I would not point a finger at Sorkin for attempting this maneuver. Actually,I would applaud it, and often try to do it myself.
Where his goals grate against me in this newest pair of episodes (“Nevada Day” parts one and two) is with the constant repetition of the most classic non-confrontational position that so many moderates, conservatives and politicians take on the issue of gay marriage. He presents us with two characters—Matt Albie and Harriet Hayes, former lovers forced to work together for the good of a show they both love, constantly catty over the issue of their lingering mutual attraction, and opposing beliefs—put into conflict with the issue itself. Harriet states for a tabloid reporter that “The bible says it's wrong, but it also says 'judge not, lest ye be judged.'”
This trite response has been used in the past. Is the latter part supposed to soften the blow of the former? This sort of deferral is ridiculous. To my eye, the only sane point of view is vocal support of gay marriage. Vocal with action, vocal with conversation, and with your votes. Sorkin's mouthpiece, Albie, serves up a brutal attack to her continued support of this stance. Something to the effect that any way you slice it, she is saying that homosexual love is inferior or less pure than heterosexual love. And yet, we see Sorkin try to save her. She continues to speak in her defense—wounded, but her mind has not been changed. Albie does not go on.
I could go on, I could take it to new heights if I wanted to. I find “defense of marriage” to be a villainous, small-minded assault by fearful misanthropes, pandering to an imaginary system of “morality,” which holds them together, and holds our nation back from truly improving ourselves and the world around us. I can grant someone the distrust of new sciences—stem cell research—or even the sort of paranoid mindset that causes us to divert funds from education and into defense. These are arguable positions. Taking away the right to love and to do so publicly and with the consent of our government “by the people” is only a cold, cruel and pedantic desire to see nothing that is not familiar in the world.
When Hayes is defending herself, she remarks that it is unfair to compare the gay rights movement to the crusade of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She states that the difference is that black people have been living publicly as black people for hundreds of years. Disregarding the fact that genetic differences in pigmentation have been present for tens of thousands of years, and that our white skin is newer, chronologically, this is a ridiculous argument. Immigrants and former slaves were persecuted precisely because they could not hide, and you will not catch more than a handful of contemptible dunces claiming that the 14th Amendment was anything but good in this age.
She makes her case that conservative people, the rural or evangelical denizens of “red states,” need time to adjust to these things. That they just want small, cozy lives, and to raise their children. (I almost feel like the “children” comment was a stab at homosexuals, and a backhanded way of adding imaginary fuel to her dimming, hate-filled fire.) She states that because homosexuals have only lived openly for forty years or so, that her bigoted allies in Alabama and Oklahoma should be given time to get used to gay people. I may be putting words into her mouth, but I feel like she's saying that rights should be dished out on a first-come-first-served basis, and that oppression is okay in the short term, as long as it's squelched once the gentry have had their fun.
There's a lot of double-talk and smokescreening that goes on in the gay marriage debate. People on the opposition side have to take a lot more steps to come out looking like anything but hate-mongers. The morality argument died a long time ago. When ninety some percent of the corporations in America specifically enumerate protections against discrimination based on sexual preference, and when nations on three continents are legalizing the right of a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, to call the gay lifestyle prurient, unnatural, unclean or an affront to God's plan is to equate American morality as mired in a stone age sensibility. We are saying that we can legislate decreased rights for minorities based on the comfort zones of the rapidly shrinking majority.
Harriet is arguing that she is deserving of special treatment because she is straight and Christian. Fuck Harriet Hayes. You are not granted the right of an insular, unchallenged life.
And that, I believe, is the core of this issue. This is about the battle between what is fair and what is comfortable. It is not the job of government to cater to the majority. It is the job of government to give people the freedom to live their lives as they choose, and to protect us from one another. Remind me some day to talk on the state referendum system and tyranny of the majority.
I was in love with the whole conceit of it within ten minutes. I bit my teeth into the writing, the acting, the staging and the presentation before I knew what was going on, and it was over. I'm predisposed to a gut-punching love of this sort of television. Doomed to watch. Even now, as I gnash my teeth and feel the whirling dervish dance of violence loom over my restrained action, I am clamoring for more. Drooling. Wanting.
This is the problem. Sorkin wants dearly to be the trumpeter of the gap-bridging phenomenon we are all a part of. He would cut his fingers off to be a part of the coming together that we see between Red State and Blue State. He is a merger pariah. A shill for the new democracy. As such, it is his holy, faithful goal to show the beauty of the rural mentality, the truth and intelligence and wit within the conservative ideology. And in his most recently aired foray into this noble-but-dangerous mission, he painted himself into a corner.
I feel that there is an argument between the Republican ideals and their Democratic counterparts. Fiscal conservativism of the sort that ennobles the capitalist notion of fairness and equal opportunity is still very alive in this country. So despite my own liberal leanings, I would not point a finger at Sorkin for attempting this maneuver. Actually,I would applaud it, and often try to do it myself.
Where his goals grate against me in this newest pair of episodes (“Nevada Day” parts one and two) is with the constant repetition of the most classic non-confrontational position that so many moderates, conservatives and politicians take on the issue of gay marriage. He presents us with two characters—Matt Albie and Harriet Hayes, former lovers forced to work together for the good of a show they both love, constantly catty over the issue of their lingering mutual attraction, and opposing beliefs—put into conflict with the issue itself. Harriet states for a tabloid reporter that “The bible says it's wrong, but it also says 'judge not, lest ye be judged.'”
This trite response has been used in the past. Is the latter part supposed to soften the blow of the former? This sort of deferral is ridiculous. To my eye, the only sane point of view is vocal support of gay marriage. Vocal with action, vocal with conversation, and with your votes. Sorkin's mouthpiece, Albie, serves up a brutal attack to her continued support of this stance. Something to the effect that any way you slice it, she is saying that homosexual love is inferior or less pure than heterosexual love. And yet, we see Sorkin try to save her. She continues to speak in her defense—wounded, but her mind has not been changed. Albie does not go on.
I could go on, I could take it to new heights if I wanted to. I find “defense of marriage” to be a villainous, small-minded assault by fearful misanthropes, pandering to an imaginary system of “morality,” which holds them together, and holds our nation back from truly improving ourselves and the world around us. I can grant someone the distrust of new sciences—stem cell research—or even the sort of paranoid mindset that causes us to divert funds from education and into defense. These are arguable positions. Taking away the right to love and to do so publicly and with the consent of our government “by the people” is only a cold, cruel and pedantic desire to see nothing that is not familiar in the world.
When Hayes is defending herself, she remarks that it is unfair to compare the gay rights movement to the crusade of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She states that the difference is that black people have been living publicly as black people for hundreds of years. Disregarding the fact that genetic differences in pigmentation have been present for tens of thousands of years, and that our white skin is newer, chronologically, this is a ridiculous argument. Immigrants and former slaves were persecuted precisely because they could not hide, and you will not catch more than a handful of contemptible dunces claiming that the 14th Amendment was anything but good in this age.
She makes her case that conservative people, the rural or evangelical denizens of “red states,” need time to adjust to these things. That they just want small, cozy lives, and to raise their children. (I almost feel like the “children” comment was a stab at homosexuals, and a backhanded way of adding imaginary fuel to her dimming, hate-filled fire.) She states that because homosexuals have only lived openly for forty years or so, that her bigoted allies in Alabama and Oklahoma should be given time to get used to gay people. I may be putting words into her mouth, but I feel like she's saying that rights should be dished out on a first-come-first-served basis, and that oppression is okay in the short term, as long as it's squelched once the gentry have had their fun.
There's a lot of double-talk and smokescreening that goes on in the gay marriage debate. People on the opposition side have to take a lot more steps to come out looking like anything but hate-mongers. The morality argument died a long time ago. When ninety some percent of the corporations in America specifically enumerate protections against discrimination based on sexual preference, and when nations on three continents are legalizing the right of a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, to call the gay lifestyle prurient, unnatural, unclean or an affront to God's plan is to equate American morality as mired in a stone age sensibility. We are saying that we can legislate decreased rights for minorities based on the comfort zones of the rapidly shrinking majority.
Harriet is arguing that she is deserving of special treatment because she is straight and Christian. Fuck Harriet Hayes. You are not granted the right of an insular, unchallenged life.
And that, I believe, is the core of this issue. This is about the battle between what is fair and what is comfortable. It is not the job of government to cater to the majority. It is the job of government to give people the freedom to live their lives as they choose, and to protect us from one another. Remind me some day to talk on the state referendum system and tyranny of the majority.
posted by Maximillian @ 11:04 PM
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