Bozell: NBC's 'Studio 60' Debuts With Christian-Bashing Plot, Just Like 'The West Wing'

In his culture column this week, Brent Bozell offers a preview of Monday's premiere of NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." (The premiere, on DVD, was available from Netflix.) Why critique it? The first plot of this "Saturday Night Live"-derived show from "West Wing" producer-writer Aaron Sorkin centers around a canceled skit entitled "Crazy Christians," which apparently was a laugh riot:

When his skit is axed, the outraged fictional "SNL" producer [played by Judd Hirsch] bounds onto the stage and unleashes a lecture on live television. It’s what Sorkin has probably wanted to say about network executives (and their alleged overreaction to those crazy Christians) many times. "The two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott." Sorkin was so impressed with his own insult that it reruns later in the show in fictional news clips.

Two major characters fight over how their romance broke up when the woman sang hymns on "The 700 Club." Again, Sorkin aims low, [with Matthew Perry's character] insisting Pat Robertson is a vicious racist. "You put on a dress and sang for a bigot." When the woman replies that the faithful audience of the show inspires her, he cracks, "Throw in the Halloween costumes and you got yourself a Klan rally."

Sorkin actually pushed a similar plot for the first episode of "The West Wing," in which lovable liberal President Josiah Bartlet instructed a clueless, caricatured Christian evangelist who didn’t know the order of the Ten Commandments and then unloaded a long sermon on vicious Christian pro-lifers threatening his 12-year-old granddaughter. He told the conservative Christians to get their fat (bottoms) out of his White House.

Maybe cursing out the Christians is his show-opening good luck charm.

This is sad from Sorkin, who Brent reports has declared his belief that "spirituality" that doesn’t have to come from a "divine source," and who says that the world’s religions are just a collection of "many fairy tales" that don’t have the happy endings intended. Instead, Hollywood people like Sorkin find their inspiration in hallucinogenic mushrooms and crack cocaine.