The guy behind The West Wing is going after a certain ex-Alaska governor who thinks she knows what makes good TV.
Caribou hunting ain't it.
In a long rant today on The Huffington Post, Aaron Sorkin slams Sarah Palin as a "witless bully" for staging a caribou hunt on her TLC reality series, Sarah Palin's Alaska.
And he's just getting warmed up.
Sorkin's screed came after Palin took to her Facebook page to slam critics of her hunting expedition.
"Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation,"she wrote.
Sorkin, a possible Oscar nominee for penning The Social Network, fired back, saying he couldn't tell the difference between what Palin did in carving up a caribou on her"truly awful reality show" with the crime Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback Michael Vick committed by fronting a dogfighting ring.
"I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals," writes Sorkin. "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."
He follows up by blasting the fakery behind Palin's Annie Oakley act:
"So I don't think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I'm in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God's country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)."
He also chides Palin for using what he calls "The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel" as a platform to help her beef up her bona fides with Republican and Tea Party voters.
"And you didn't just do it for fun and you didn't just do it for money. That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain," Sorkin opined. "You knew there'd be a protest from PETA and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you'd be—bringing the right together with the far right."
Earlier PETA veep Dan Mathews launched his own broadside, saying, "Sarah seems to think that resorting to violence and blood and guts may lure people into watching her boring show. But the ratings remain as dead as the poor animals she shoots."
Hard to believe, but Palin isn't remaining mum.
"So a leftwing Hollywood producer thinks there is no 'distinction' between harvesting healthy, wild organic protein to feed my family and engaging in dog fighting?" she writes in an email to the Associated Press. "I didn't know anyone ate dogs, tanned the hides, and made boots out of them."
It is on!