Aaron Sorkin, the creator and producer of NBC's The West Wing, is
coming under fire for remarks he made about President George W. Bush to a New
Yorker magazine reporter.
Sorkin -- who was arrested at a Burbank, Calif., airport last year for trying
to sneak drugs onto a flight to Las Vegas -- openly criticized President Bush
and NBC's recent primetime behind-the-scenes show on the Bush White House.
Web site Drudgereport.com first
broke the story.
In the New Yorker article, slated to hit newsstands later this month,
Sorkin reportedly said, 'It's absolutely right at this time that we're all
laying off the [Bush] bubblehead jokes . but the truth is that we're simply
pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage at the World
Series or that he, by God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City
and jumbling the first line of the Olympic opening ceremony.'
Sorkin also took shots at last month's NBC special, The BushWhite
House: Inside the Real West Wing, which aired as the lead-in to The West
Wing.
He is quoted in the March 4 issue of The New Yorker as saying, 'The
White House pumped up the president's schedule to show him being much busier and
more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen. The show was a valentine
to Bush.'
An NBC spokeswoman had no comment. Insiders said network executives will
handle the issue during a Tuesday-morning conference call with TV reporters.
At Warner Bros., the studio that produces The West Wing, a spokeswoman
was unavailable for comment.
