The Social Network and West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin has written a takedown of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, the TLC series that on Sunday featured Sarah killing a caribou, which the network heavily promoted but which was ultimately watched by fewer viewers.
The whole thing was pretty ludicrous, especially when Sarah insists, “the animals have the advantage” and claims she’s hunting because “there’s no grocery store nearby.” While she may actually hunt, the whole thing came across as a ratings grab (on TLC? No way!), but it failed, as the show lost 700,000 viewers compared to the previous week, down to “a new low” after setting records with its debut. People tuned in and then tuned out, although two weeks ago there was a bit of a rebound, perhaps because there was nothing else on that Sunday after Thanksgiving.
PETA, never one to miss an opportunity for publicity, quoted one of its execs in a statement who said that “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.”
But the best response came from Sorkin, who wrote on The Huffington Post about “the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show.” His argument is summed up in his final sentence: “I eat meat, there are leather chairs in my office, Sarah Palin is deranged and The Learning Channel should be ashamed of itself.”
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