December 15, 2010
I read an article the other day in The Huffington Post by Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, and more recently, The Social Network. Sorkin’s piece was highly critical of TV program Sarah Palin’s Alaska, particularly a scene where she killed a caribou. The scene is boring, but you can watch it here if you wish.
On why Palin’s hunting is disgusting, Sorkin starts:
Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.
First: Yes, only you, Aaron Sorkin, know the definition of the word “visceral.” You are a god amid mortals.
Second: You have no problem eating meat or wearing a belt, but you don”t enjoy the fact that animals had to die because of it? What flawless logic. The very act of enjoying a steak or a belt involves enjoying the fact that an animal has died.
Third: There is a difference between needlessly torturing an animal and killing one while hunting.
Fourth: You don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them, and if you were picked to kill them, you wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while you were slicing the animal apart? OK. No one dances during a field dressing”that would be dangerous. And of course you wouldn”t want to do the killing, you metrosexual piss-poor excuse of a man. You would rather have someone else kill the animal so you could enjoy the fruits of its death.
Sorkin continues:
You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing.
