Aaron Sorkin, famed screenwriter and director, hit out at cancel culture during a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
Sorkin made the remarks while interviewing about his forthcoming project, "Being the Ricardos," starring actors Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem.
In an article published on Thursday, Sorkin said that he believed there are parallels between cancel culture and McCarthy-era Hollywood.
"The bad guys during the blacklist, it wasn't just Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn," Sorkin said. "Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn would have been powerless if it wasn't for this other committee whose job it was, if the network wants to hire me on a television series, it was their job to tell the network whether that was OK, whether a guy who owned a couple of supermarkets on Long Island was going to be OK with the network advertising their product during my show."
He continued, saying that if media heads "told these groups to take a walk," things would have been very different.
"If the studio heads and network heads had told these groups to take a walk, and had just not listened to them, everything would have been fine," Sorkin reasoned. "And so, for instance, if we were to talk about Dave Chappelle for a moment, I certainly could make a rebuttal argument against a number of the points that he makes in his special, but I have absolutely no argument with Netflix and Ted Sarandos for putting it on their platform."
Sorkin also blasted Twitter mobs and said that canceling or banning things isn't contributing to healing a heavily divided culture — such as the one in which we live.
"What we need are more people to say no to — and that's what Twitter is, Twitter is that committee that says whether or not you can abuse someone, and they must be ignored," Sorkin added.
"I just strongly believe, and now more than ever when we're living in a frighteningly divided culture, that people talking to each other is the way out and that banning things isn't," he insisted.
Elsewhere during the interview, Sorkin said that his play, "To Kill a Mockingbird," was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and said that important films and productions need to be preserved for the integrity of education and cultural evolution.
"My play, 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' had to shut down along with everyone else a year ago March, when COVID came along, and during that year and a half, five different school districts in the country banned the teaching of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' along with 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'Of Mice and Men,'" Sorkin said. "And people will point out to me, 'Well, they use the N-word in To Kill a Mockingbird.' Isn't it better to have a discussion in class about this? Isn't it an opportunity to talk about that word and why that word is almost holy in its power?"
The American Red Scare of the 1950s may be one of the most important — and most terrifying — events in our nation's history. It was a witch hunt — an all-out assault — on any American citizen deemed to be a threat simply because of their thoughts.
Led by Senator McCarthy, the House of Un-American Activities Committee destroyed lives. Mere accusations sometimes meant you were stripped of your job and your dignity. Sound familiar?
On Glenn TV tonight, Glenn Beck outlines how we've gone from pursuing alleged communists to pursuing "right-wing extremists." But how are our new "reality czars" defining that? Is it Trump supporters, red-state Republicans, conspiracy-theorist "nut jobs"? Our new Red Scare is here, America. Are you on the list? Later, Donald Trump Jr. joins Glenn to call out this modern McCarthyism and explains the real reason for President Trump's second impeachment trial.
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The principal of a Tennessee high school is on paid administrative leave after comparing social media's speech crackdowns to "McCarthyism" during a homeroom video message to students.
During his nine-minute address Monday, principal Barton Thorne of Cordova High School, near Memphis, said freedom of speech is being threatened by social media and tech companies, the Commercial Appeal reported.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all banned President Donald Trump — along with thousands of other users — in the wake of last week's U.S. Capitol riot.
WREG-TV said it obtained audio of Thorne's remarks to students during which he criticized the riot as well as the behavior of social media.
"It's what's going on with Twitter and Facebook and Google and Apple and their decision as private companies to filter and to decide what ... you hear and know about," Thorne said, according to the station.
Thorne stressed that his comments weren't about Trump but about freedom of speech, WREG reported.
"Because there have been times even in American history where a small group of people decided what you could hear. You think about McCarthyism," he said, according the station. "If you don't know about that, you can Google that or talk to your social studies teacher."
Thorne also offered broad comparisons to 1990s federal standoffs in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and in Waco, Texas, by Branch Davidians and David Koresh, the Commercial Appeal reported.
Thorne also told students that "a marketplace of free exchange of ideas" is at stake, the paper added, and that the lack of social media accountability and regulation "should be very chilling for you, that should be very frightening for you."
He did denounce the U.S. Capitol siege, calling it "ignorance at the highest level. I don't know of too many people that are going to be okay with what happened. I don't care what side you agree with, we don't practice sedition, we don't attack our legislature," the Commerical Appeal noted.
Officials of Shelby County Schools are reviewing Thorne's comments, WREG said.
"To my understanding it was a recording that was shared on our virtual platforms," Jerrica Phillips, the district's chief of communications, told the station. Phillips added to the station that she'll "have to learn more about whether or not it was an opening school message or how exactly it went out or what time of day."
WREG said Thorne's comments come at a time when SCS is working to help staff know the right way and wrong way to address politics and other issues.
"Emotionally charged situations, we have to sometimes temper back, recalibrate, think about the message we're sending to our student," Michael Lowe of the SCS Office of Equity and Access told the station. "Because Cordova is like the City of Memphis; it's made up of a salad bowl of many different students of all areas of Memphis."
District board member Sheleah Harris said the allegations are "extremely unfortunate and do not reflect the true value of" the school or the district, the Commercial Appeal reported.
"With the horrific events from last week at our U.S. Capitol, we have to ensure our children, teachers, and school staff remain in a consistent environment that promotes safety, cultural sensitivity, and represents the highest level of excellence," Harris added in a statement to the paper. "As leaders, we must be intentional about creating spaces for our students to discuss and process events that take place in our country and community."
The Commercial Appeal reported that Thorne on Wednesday said "individuals who are inciting violence should be removed" and that a supervisor asked him to not speak at length to the media about his speech to students and the district's investigation.
Perhaps most moving and memorable about 'Oppenheimer' is the moral conflict and ultimate ambiguity about who exactly are 'bad guys.'
In short, the committee’s treatment of 1AP 'is a gross affront to the First Amendment.'
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