Author Page for Scott Lemieux

Can This Argument Be Saved?

In response to my claim that the exemption of women from punishment under laws banning abortion is fatally incoherent, a commenter here (as a TAPPED commenter did earlier) invokes Ronald Dworkin’s argument that abortion is a “cosmic shame” that nonetheless doesn’t rise to the level of murder. The commenter says:

I have some sympathy for that argument even though I don’t accept the premise (that abortion is at least morally problematic because it shows “disrespect for life”.) Dworkin argues that this is really the position of most abortion opponents- that they do not in fact think that abortion is murder, and that they don’t think this is shown through their actions. That part seems exactly right…If you have a position like this it doesn’t seem implausible that one might think that abortion should be illegal, but might still think that those having abortions should not punished. I don’t find that an attractive option myself, and hope I’d not find it to be one even if I did think that abortion showed disrespect for life, but it’s not an incoherent one.

The problem is that adopting Dworkin’s position makes things worse, not better, for pro-lifers:

–Fundamental reproductive rights have been entrenched for decades, in decisions that have no chance of being overturned. Whatever its other defects, the “seamless web” argument that fetuses are comparable to babies offers a compelling justification for overriding these rights. An inchoate sense that abortion reflects disrespect for life but not in a way that is comparable to murder, much less so. Most people are ambivalent about abortion, but there is no effective way of writing these moral ambivalences into legislative enactments. As Dworkin argues, once you’ve conceded that abortion is more of a “morals” issue like adultery, it becomes almost impossible to justify criminalization.

–The exclusion of women from punishment under statutes justified by such rationales is every bit as incoherent as it is under claims that abortion is comparable to murder. Once the criminal law is involved, there’s simply no good reason to exclude women from punishment that is applied to doctors unless you don’t believe that women are moral agents, period. (It would also remove any legal stigma from self-administered abortions, although such abortions are not in any way morally different.) Dworkin’s rationale might justify lower penalties in general, but provides no basis whatsoever for excluding the woman primarily responsible for the act from punishments that are applied to the person she hires.

–Finally, an absolutely inevitable consequence of abortion laws enacted under such a rationale is that these laws will be enforced in an egregiously arbitrary manner (as was the case in the United States pre-Roe.) In practice, seeing abortion as justifiable in some circumstances but not others will mean that it’s justifiable when you choose to get one but not necessarily when others get them — which means that abortion access comes down to power, not finely drawn moral distinctions. Criminalizing abortion really means abortion-on-demand for affluent women and very limited access to safe abortions for poor women, which is both unfair and completely incoherent, unless somebody wants to argue that abortion is less of a “cosmic shame” when a fetus is in an affluent woman’s body.

The argument that most pro-lifers don’t really see abortion as comparable to murder (which, as was the point of my argument, is certainly correct) makes their position weaker, not stronger. Seeing abortion as a difficult, ambiguous moral problem makes criminalizing abortion almost impossible to defend if any value is placed on reproductive autonomy at all.

[Cross-posted to TAPPED.]

Moral What Now?

In response to this post, one Seth Edenbaum–who seems to think that his silly point is such an astounding insight that he cut and pasted it to another post (with some Lee Siegelesque rants about yuppies and Willaimsburg) –says:

The issue is not one of internal consistency. Or rather the argument with the majority of abortion opponents will not be won by trying to convince them that their arguments are illogical (or that they are illogical under the circumstances they choose to accept). Their arguments are attempts to impose a sense of “moral seriousness” by means of law.
How do you respond to that desire? That is the only question that is not academic: that does not revolve around the two of you and others like you talking amongst yourselves.

Well, first of all, the terminology gives the arguments he’s demanding I respond to a rational content they don’t have. Criminalizing specific acts (with the attendant
ruination of lives than ensues) out of an inchoate sense that people are making choices you would prefer them not to be making is neither moral nor serious. But as to the question of how to appeal to people who have made a priori commitment to bad laws based on irrational gibberish, I’m sure I have no idea. Once I again I will repeat that I am not a political operative; when making political arguments in these forums am I trying to expose positions that are factually, logically, or normatively deficient. How to appeal to people who simply don’t care about defending their positions in terms that are intelligible to others is not my department.

Feminists Against Women

Admittedly, when it comes to illogic on the part of supporters of criminalized abortion, the rape and incest exemptions are relatively small potatoes. What really gives away the show is their unwillingness to apply criminal sanctions against women who are allegedly committing something akin to murder. Hack politicians, of course, respond to questions about how the Republican Party platform can support a constitutional amendment that would make abortion first-degree murder in all 50 states but would entirely exempt women from punishment by babbling nonsense. But even serious, usually principled pro-life intellectuals like Ramesh Ponnuru are willing to claim that abortion can be comparable to murder as a moral act but a matter of less import than spitting on the sidewalk when it comes to punishing women who obtain them. Evidently, one of these premises must be incorrect.

Or, to be more precise, the Republican position on abortion is incoherent…if you believe that women are rational citizens, fully responsible for their actions. As Reva Siegel and Sarah Blustain reported in their terrific article in the October Prospect, however, what might seem to be banal assumptions about women in 2005 are by no means universally shared by pro-lifers. When you consider the atavistic findings of South Dakota’s (egregiously stacked) task force, it’s not surprising that their draconian new abortion law doesn’t punish women for allegedly taking a life:

South Dakota based its ban on a 70-page set of findings contained in the “Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion” — by far the most comprehensive government account of the arguments and evidence for protecting women from abortion. A transparently one-sided publication — even the anti-abortion chair of the task force voted against it to publicize her objections to its abstinence recommendations and abortion “facts” — the report includes a variety of findings explicitly endorsed by the legislature as the basis for the ban. Some are the more familiar, fetal-focused items, emphasizing that a fetus is a “whole separate unique living human being.” But more than half of the 10 findings focus on women. The task force found that abortions cause long-term emotional and physical damage to women, everything from suicidal ideation to the possibility of breast cancer. But the task force’s report went even further: It argued that the state needed a ban because of the epidemic overriding pressures on women to abort — from a family member, a husband or boyfriend, or an abortion clinic — that make extra protection from abortion necessary. Finally, to make credible its claims about women’s health and women’s choices, the task force made repeated claims about women’s nature. It asserted that women would never freely choose an abortion — even absent outside pressures — because doing so would violate “the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child.” The task force took as a statement of biological and psychological fact that a mother’s connection to her unborn baby was more authentic than her own statement of desire not to be pregnant. These gender-role convictions are at the heart of the movement’s claim that the nation must now combat an epidemic of dangerous and coerced abortions.

This is how the circle can be squared: import 19th century conceptions of women as passive vessels, unable to make rational choices, whose nature is defined by childbirth. (You can recognize the task force’s understanding of women in the language of the 1873 Supreme Court decision that upheld an Illinois law that prevented women from practicing law: “The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood…The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society.”) Which makes it all the more remarkable, then, that as reported by Stephanie Simon these profoundly reactionary conceptions of gender are being advanced in South Dakota by activists calling themselves “feminists.” This a rather strange name for people who believe the assumptions underlying the 19th century legal status of women are correct. Perhaps after they’re done in South Dakota, these activists can start groups called “Jews for anti-Semitism” or “steak-eaters for PETA.”

(Cross-posted at TAPPED.)

Crash

To people who saw this and know I work on the Upper East Side, 1)I’m fine, and 2)although I can see the helicopters out the window I have no particular knowledge of what’s going on. More later if I find anything out; for now, the mundane task of a College Senate meeting awaits.

…RIP. My last memory of him will be phoning in to defend himself on a talk show earlier this week. It’s a sad story.

The Disastrous Toll of the Iraq War

In light of the new study of deaths caused by the War in Iraq, Sam reminds us of this pair of classic posts by Daniel Davies, debunking the know-nothing attempts to attack the study. Needless to say, as Greenwald notes “Bush followers have become overnight expert statisticians and are able — with certainty no less — to declare these numbers to be wildly inflated and unreliable (some try to provide some reasoning, while some don’t even bother).” He does leave out Rick Moran, who also tries to claims that the study was “politically motivated” because…there were erroneous critiques of the study in 2004! (The fact that he’s bringing up stuff like the Iraqi Body Count makes clear that he simply doesn’t understand what the study is analyzing, let alone understand anything about statistical methodology.) The statistical ignorance about to be launched by Bush administration dead-enders is going to be staggering, and it’s safe to say we’re not going to see anything that Davies hasn’t already addressed and disproven.

Glenn Reynolds is Making Sense

No, seriously:

I’ll take neat printing over sloppy cursive any day, and — take it from a guy who’s graded a lot of bluebooks — nearly all the cursive you see is sloppy. It’s hard to find someone under 70 with nice, traditional penmanship.

Sometimes, I actually say this before in-class exams, and when I forget I always regret it. 99% of the time, cursive writing is a disaster; while with printing you can pretty much always make it out, bad cursive writing might as well be hieroglyphics, and most cursive writing is bad. I curse every teacher in this day in age who insists on it.

…Amanda is also making sense, which is less surprising.

Academy of the Overrated: The Induction Speech

I should have know better than to write something about Aaron Sorkin when Lance would do the job, but this is exactly right:

Whatever. He started as a playwright, he learned to tell his stories by having his characters talk them out, and he hasn’t learned any new lessons for his adopted medium, which is only part of his weakness as a television writer.

Sorkin writes snappy dialogue. But he doesn’t write as much of it as you might think, if you listen to his shows with only half an ear.

His characters don’t talk in their own voices. They all talk in his voice. And they don’t talk about themselves. They talk about what’s happening around them. Sorkin writes lots of exposition and divides it up among his characters to read at us.
He’s like a novelist who puts all the narration inside quotation marks.

Lance also points us to this review in the Chicago Reader, which tempts me to watch Studio 60 next week if only for the trainwreck effect:

Too insidery? Does anybody think this looks even remotely like what really goes on at Saturday Night Live, or at any other show in the history of TV? It’s straight out of a World War II movie about a desperate mission behind enemy lines. All the cliches are in place: the heroic renegades who can’t fit in with the military establishment, the tough, old-school commanding officer who grudgingly agrees they’re the best men for the job, even the perky, brilliant young staff officer who pipes up with the daringly unconventional plan that Just Might Work.

But it can’t be a joke — not given the show’s enfeebled concept of humor. Our heroes, those edgy, brilliant writer/producers, need a way to reestablish their cred as quickly as possible. So they, too, come up with a daring idea. They’ll open with one of those big, controversial, startling comedy sketches they used to do, the ones that back in the day got everybody in America talking. Here’s the sketch: they have a choir sing “We are the very model of a modern network TV show,” to the tune of “Modern Major General” from The Pirates of Penzance.

Now there’s cutting-edge comedy for you: a Gilbert and Sullivan parody! It’ll have the frat boys in the audience in stitches!

I haven’t even gotten to the backstage drama. So far it’s mostly focused on why one of the writer/producers has broken up with his girlfriend, who is both the star of the SNL-ish show and a Christian singer. He says she’s pissed at him because he didn’t show up when she sang the “Star Spangled Banner” at a baseball game. But that’s just a cover story. The real reason is that he can’t forgive her for going on The 700 Club to promote her new CD of Christian music.

Empathize with his dilemma? I can’t even follow it. He’s pretending to be indifferent to her performance of the national anthem to cover up how he’s actually upset because she made a promotional appearance on a talk show he disapproves of. Has anyone in Hollywood — anyone on planet earth — ever had a problem so shallow and rarefied at once? It’s like a story in Us Weekly rewritten by Henry James.

Well, there is Ann Althouse and her crusade against wearing shorts in the summer.

Let’s review: Studio 60‘s pose of being all backstage and insidery is a preposterous sham, and its characters bear no relationship to actual human beings. Sounds like classic TV to me — why isn’t it a hit?

Good question. There’s lots more about how the anti-TV rants he puts in the mouths of his characters are anachronistic old-fartism, pining for a Golden Age of tightly controlled quality television that didn’t actually exist. I can’t say about Studio 60, but it was definitely true of The West Wing. As Ezra pointed out, it was never a liberal fantasy; it was a nostalgic fantasy of High Broderism, in which decent, moderate Republicans engaged with principled, well-meaning, moderately liberal Democrats in what resembled the Oxford Debating Society more than actual politics. You could definitely make an interesting show about the nature of contemporary politics, but whatever its other strengths The West Wing had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Of Warm Impermanence

Like Rob, starting Tuesday I will be contributing to TAPPED. I will still be doing a fair amount of posting here–for some reason, the Prospect is not fully convinced about the value of lengthy posts about baseball, pretentious French movies, the silliness of Ann Althouse, etc. (I’m sure the hockey blogging is the main reason I was hired, though.) Still, to ensure that there’s a steady supply of material for our tens of fans, and deciding that quality material was not necessarily inconsistent with the L, G & M concept, we are proud to announce that the inimitable Dave Noon of The Axis of Evel Knievel will be joining our classic power trio format. Dave introduces himself thusly:

All-purpose historian from U. of Alaska Southeast, proprietor of the Axis of Evel Knievel, and whatever else you guys want to make up about me. My anonymity on the internets is pretty well shot, and I’m planning to keep the swearing and blasphemy to a minimum, so there’s no sense in hiding from the world. Besides, LGM will be the most dignified, respectable thing I have going in my life. So long as I don’t turn into the blogging equivalent of Poochie the Dog…

This, of course, won’t happen–Dave may be half Joe Camel, but he’s only an eighth Fonzarelli. He will unquestionably create a proactive new paradigm here at L, G & M. Enjoy!

It’s the Humiliation

The most salient thing about the story that got some attention last month about servers who were fired after they refused to go along with a regimen in which women (but not men) were subject to weigh-ins and making their weights public is that it’s entirely about humiliation. Although of course there are serious feminist issues with narrow conceptions of beauty, the excessive importance placed on conventional attractiveness, etc., one can argue that in our unjust society conventional beauty matters for jobs like this, and evidently there are greater injustices involved where aesthetic factors determine job decisions where they weren’t even arguably relevant. But this kind of harassment by employers is not about wanting to draw traffic or increase tips or whatever. You don’t need to weigh someone to see if they’re conventionally attractive or not. And, of course, being slender is generally a conventionally attractive trait for men too, but it’s hard to imagine male waiters being subjected to this kind of treatment. This is about female employees being dominated, and as such represents a very instructive example of sexual harassment and why it’s a serious problem.

Dred Scott As A Weapon

I have a piece at TAPPED on Mark Graber’s new book up (it’s sort of a prequel to this post, which I will have a follow-up on later.) The biggest point I wanted to make was to address a common criticism when I’ve presented my work about countermobilization, both informally and in academic settings. Understandably, many people assumed that this is an argument cooked up in order to defend a decision I like. My first response is to say that while I do have an a priori commitment to abortion rights, I certainly don’t have any commitment to abortion rights litigation. If I didn’t think that legal rights-claiming was an effective method of achieving the goals I seek, I would have no reason to say so. But more importantly, I think that my theory holds for decisions I deplore as much ones I support. Jeffrey Rosen is equally wrong to predict a unique backlash to Bush v. Gore as he is with Roe. Dred Scott is sort of the ultimate example. In addition, the fact that antebellum slavery policy is used to attack the ineptitude of the court and romanticize the ability of legislatures to reach stable compromises demonstrates the extent to which these claims rest on feeble tautologies. Congress quite conspicuously failed to reach a stable compromise on the slavery issue, and the structure of the elections to Congress–which then, as now, tended to emphasize ideologies rather than centrists among members, especially in the House–had made reaching a compromise in 1857 impossible. It’s frankly perverse to hold up Congress under the Buchanan administration to make arguments about the superior ability of legislatures to produce effective political compromises.

My other point is about the inability of grand theory to resolve actively contested normative disputes. Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft generously replies to my argument, and allows me to clarify a few points. I continue to disagree entirely with his or her contention that Dred Scott was clearly wrong in terms of existing law (as opposed to morally.) To take the key points as they come up:

• BTD says that he disagrees with “Lemieux’s acceptance of the division on Dred Scott as being one of originalists and proponents of a “living Constitution.”" To be clear, I’m definitely not claiming this. As Graber says, “the issue in Dred Scott seems to be whether Taney was, as aspirationalists claim, a bad historicist, or, as historicists claim, a bad aspirationalist. In fact, he was at times both and at other times neither.” What we’re arguing is that both the majority and dissenting opinions contained elements of various grand theories, and that plausible claims can be mounted on both sides of the question using any grand theory.
• “I reject the idea that proponents of a Living Constitution are not originalists, in the sense that the idea of a Living Constitution is to promote original Constitutional purpose to current circumstances.” I agree with this, in least in the sense that I don’t see aspirationalism as somehow divorced from the text of the Constitution. But it is analytically distinct from any robust form of originalism in the sense that originalists focus on meanings at the time of ratification while aspirationalist apply broad principles in a forward-looking manner. (It is certainly true that originalists, especially when trying to reconcile their theories with politically popular outcomes, will sometimes define principles at such a high level of abstraction as to completely unmoor them from any concrete historical meanings, and at this point originalism loses any distinct character as a theory, and is just a truism.)
• At any rate, I’m not trying to sell or discredit any particular grand theory; what I’m saying is that grand theories simply cannot produce determinate outcomes on questions the framers deliberately left ambiguous. The simple fact is that the Constitution is silent on the question of Congress’ ability to regulate slavery in the territories, and this is not an accident but a consequence of the fact that a clear resolution of the question would have likely split the states during the ratification process.
• BTD then articulates a structuralist theory of Constitutional interpretation, identified with John Marshall, and locates a similar theory in Lincoln’s famous Cooper Union speech. Now, I am something of a structuralist myself, and I agree that Lincoln constructs a perfectly plausible reading that I of course find infinitely more attractive than Taney’s arguments for moral reasons. But this isn’t enough; the question is not whether there are plausible arguments against Taney, but whether Lincoln provides the only plausible reading of the Constitution in 1857. And the answer to this is clearly that he doesn’t (see pp. 57-76 of the Graber book.)
• The short version is that the argument that there was a Constitutional right, embedded in the due process clause of the 5th Amendment, to bring property in the territories was a widely held view. BTD asks: “prohibiting slavery in certain territories. Was there a Constitutional right to carry your slaves to territories? That is a property right? Based on what? The right to travel? The full faith and credit clause?” What BTD doesn’t mention is that not only McLean–who argued that “[i]t is said the Territories are common property of the States, and that every man has a right to go there with his property. This is not controverted“–but Lincoln himself accepted the validity of these property rights, which was the mainstream Republican position of the time. Were they lawless hacks ignoring the clear text of the Constitution? Lincoln and McLean disagreed about whether slaves remained property once taken to a jurisdiction that didn’t have slavery, but to argue that this was a universally accepted proposition in 1857 would be farcical (as is the claim that Article IV can only be read to say that slaves cease to become property when taken into states–if this was true, the Constitution wouldn’t have been signed by the slave states.)
• With respect to whether individuals lost constitutional rights when going to the territories, even in 1803 many rejected this proposition, and by 1857 the position that citizens retained constitutional rights in the territories was strongly entrenched, and Republican jurists continued to treat this part of Dred Scott as good law even after the Civil War.

Again, the question is not whether the dissents in Dred Scott were plausible–they clearly were. The question is whether they are the only possible reading of the Constitution in 1857, and it simply isn’t true that they were. You simply cannot use interpretive theory to produce determinate answers to questions that the framers avoided asking to facilitate a political compromise.

The Proliferation of Religious Exemptions

An excellent article in the NYT today–apparently the first of a series–about the proliferation of special legal exemptions for religious organizations. First of all, there are some hilarious examples of the whining of allegedly persecuted majorities:

In March, hundreds of people and a number of influential lawmakers attended a conference called “The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006” in Washington and applauded the premise that religion was under attack.

Society “treats Christianity like a second-class superstition,” Tom DeLay, then a Republican representative from Texas, told the crowd. “Seen from that perspective, of course there is a war on religion.”

The argument that religious groups are victims of discrimination drew a sigh from Ms. White, the day care director in Alabama, where licensed day care centers are finding it harder to compete with unlicensed faith-based centers that do not have to comply with expensive licensing requirements.

Ah, yes, the endless persecution of the Christian white male. I defy you to show me one in a position of power anywhere in the United States! Anyway, the article goes on with a good analysis of the implications:

Critics of the 2000 law argue that the First Amendment itself has long prohibited religious discrimination in zoning, and that such zoning decisions could have been challenged just as successfully in the courts if the law had never been passed.

When Congress considered the law, “what was actually being discussed was ‘How do we make sure churches don’t get discriminated against,’ ” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in Manhattan and the author of “God vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law” (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which calls for closer scrutiny of some religious exemptions, especially those affecting land use and family law.

“Unfortunately, the answer was to give such an expansive remedy that not only are they not getting discriminated against, but they are now capable of discriminating against all other landowners,” added Professor Hamilton, who is advising Boulder County in its case.

I’ll probably discuss more specific cases as the series continues, but I’ll start with some general comments. First of all, there’s the question of whether these types of exemptions run afoul of the Establishment Clause. I might be persuaded the other way, but I’m inclined to say no. In most cases, I think that these exemptions are part of what Rehnquist called “play in the joints” in the religion clauses–that is, the kind of state action that is neither required by the free exercise clause nor prohibited by the Establishment Clause. Some of these regulations may be necessary to prevent discrimination against minority religions or involve defensible tradeoffs, and probably shouldn’t be categorically prohibited.

As to whether these exemptions are good policy, that’s a different question. For the most part, I agree with Hamilton that many of these are unwise and certainly tend to be special privileges rather than protections against discrimination. I’ll talk about specific cases later in the week, but I would outline some general principles:

• There should be a general presumption against the granting of special legal privileges to religious organizations.
• This presumption should be especially strong when it comes to spending state money, as opposed to regulation. I’ve discussed this before with respect to emergency contraception, but to the extent that the Establishment Clause is construed loosely enough to permit subsidies to religious institutions, the state should in most cases not permit organizations to engage in discriminatory behavior that would be illegal if performed by other secular organizations. If religious groups feel that this will violate their core functions, nobody’s forcing them to take the money. (I should emphasize the difference here between requiring compliance with general laws and the intentional use of spending power to coerce religious organizations; obviously, the latter would be undesirable and potentially unconstitutional.)
• In addition, the presumption against granting exemptions should get stronger as the relevant functions become more secular. There are many more cases in which exemptions applied to a church qua church are defensible than when a church is operating a hospital or independent charity.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the follow-up articles.

"You Ain’t A Writer, You’re A Journalist."

This mixed review of the weakly rated but for the most part critically revered Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip reminds me why I won’t be watching it:

Still, given that Sorkin’s White House seemed so authentic in its details, you’d expect him to nail every nuance of the late-night comedy world, from the egos to the slang. Instead, in its first hour, Studio 60 is surprisingly, even alarmingly tin-eared. After Mendell’s meltdown, the neophyte studio president (Amanda Peet) decides the only way to salvage the show’s public prestige is to rehire a superstar writer-and-director team (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) that had been jettisoned. Say what? Can you name even a single writer or director from Saturday Night Live’s entire history, save maybe Conan O’Brien and Tina Fey (who’s busy launching 30 Rock, an SNL spin­off of her own)? More to the point, if Lorne Michaels ever did implode, would the public treat it like a cultural emergency? The clip would be posted on YouTube, laughed about for a weekend, and then the show’s demographic would head back to CollegeHumor.com.

But wait—there is one case of a high-profile writer and director being publicly exiled from their own successful show: Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, on The West Wing, in 2003. The parallels are hard to ignore. You wonder if anyone politely suggested to Sorkin that his redemptive story line might be problematic. (Or, for that matter, the line of dialogue in which an actor announces, “It took four years, but the show collapsed without them.”) Every writer has a right, and an imperative, to borrow from his experiences, but Studio 60 is so baldly autobiographical that Sorkin upstages his creation. It’s not a show about a comedy franchise; it’s a show about Sorkin’s career.

Right. And the problem is, I don’t care.

While I wasn’t a fan, I don’t mean to suggest that The West Wing didn’t have its virtues. Sorkin attracts good actors, and while his dialogue is overrated at his best he can definitely get a certain classic-Hollywood repartee going. I like the idea of a show about the detailed workings of the White House. But for me, the show will always be symbolized by the post-9/11 episode, which literally involved trapping fictional schoolchildren in a room so that Sorkin could share some of his (exceedingly unoriginal) thoughts about the problems facing America, neatly constructed in A- high school essays. Admittedly, it was an extreme case, but at a lower level this kind of thing was endemic to the show; the writing was not so much intelligent as Aaron Sorkin desperately trying to let you know how intelligent he was. And this might be OK, except that while Sorkin is well-informed about politics for a television writer as a political analyst he’s not at all interesting, sharing the same moderate elite-liberal sentiments you could just as well get from Michael Kinsley.

Given how disproportionately annoyed I get by characters being used as empty vessels in which to pour banal commentary about the issues of the day, one might think that Studio 60 would be more up my alley–there would certainly seem to be less space for position paper reading than in The West Wing or A Few Good Men. Actually, I’m not so sure–apparently the new show starts of with the umpteenth post-Network example of a someone breaking character on television to share his creator’s thoughts about…Quality Television. But the bigger problem is that I’ve seen Sportsnight, which both admirers and detractors of the new show compare it to. Sportsnight is often held up as an example of a show that was undeservedly cancelled, and it was indeed intelligent, well-acted, high-minded, etc. I must admit that I also thought it was a boring dud. As satire, it was completely toothless; it was too genteel and middlebrow to be a good soap opera; but it had too little to say to be great drama. Sorkin’s convictions at least gave The West Wing some juice; Sportsnight had no reason for existing whatsoever. The new show seems to have the same problem with a extra layers of solipsism and self-pity. It has to be better than even its supporters make it sound, but I’ll pass.

I guess I would compare Sorkin to another artist widely beloved by critics and large audiences I dislike: post-Say Anything Cameron Crowe. A movie that revolves around the deep moral dilemmas created by…agents who take on too many clients? About a guy who writes some pompous Tony Robbins-esque manifesto about the Ideals of Sports Agency–but far from being made the butt of humor, he’s the deeply earnest good guy? People who have seen Studio 60 can tell me if this is accurate, but yikes it sounds bad:

To better understand Studio 60, take a look back at Sorkin’s first TV venture, Sports Night. That show also centered on a relatively trifling TV product (an ESPN-esque sports-highlight show) and a male friendship (the show’s two anchors). That show’s pilot also featured a speech in which one of the principals announces he won’t be held hostage to a viewing audience of 11-year-old boys. (On Studio 60, the boorish viewers are 12-year-olds, a slight bump in the average age of philistines.)

Ugh. At least the West Wing got him out of himself a bit…

…more here.