Aaron Sorkin Remains First-Rate Media Critic

One of the reasons that I miss having an Aaron Sorkin show on the air is that even when they fell short or proved infuriating, he had a habit of making me think -- especially in the field of analyzing the media.

"The West Wing" creator put those chops to work in a piece on Huffington Post about the flap over a Newsweek theater critic questioning whether gay actors can effectively play straight characters.

To his credit, Sorkin saw past that controversy -- which has triggered rebukes from various quarters, including "Glee" producer Ryan Murphy -- to zero in on a larger problem, which he characterizes as follows:

In one short decade we have been reconditioned to be entertained by the most private areas of other people's lives. We've become the family dog who's allowed to eat anything that falls on the floor, and the press is the little kid in the family who keeps dropping food. Sandy Bullock's life falls apart? That's for us. A golfer gets caught with strippers? We'll take that, thank you. Lindsay Lohan's an alcoholic? Mmm, mmm good! When Jennifer Aniston plays a movie character who's looking for love, her performance -- always sublime -- doesn't stand a chance against the real story we've been told it's okay to pay attention to, which is that Jennifer Aniston is looking for love. I can't hum a single John Mayer song but I can name five women he's slept with....

The volcanic eruption of tabloids, Internet insanity and -- you better believe it -- reality TV, has de-creepyized voyeurism. More than that, it's made the private lives of public people -- in the vocabulary of television writers -- the "A" story.

Bingo. And some of the biggest offenders are ostensibly the most respected and traditional news operations, which -- in their desperate attempt to attract younger patrons, frantically paddling to stay alive and relevant -- garnish even their serious news with generous dollops of creepy voyeurism.

Jon Stewart delivers such observations nightly, but he does so in a satiric setting. What Sorkin was often able to do -- sometimes by over-reaching, admittedly, but always in a thoughtful way -- was to work these issues into drama, which is no small feat.

At any rate, I recommend the Huffpo piece in its entirety. Because if he was willing to take the ridiculous pay cut, Sorkin would be very, very good at my job.