YOUR SHABBAT EDITION • OCTOBER 23, 2020 Stories for you to savor over Shabbat and through the weekend, in printable format. Sign up at forward.com/shabbat. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 1 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM Culture Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’ By Joshua Furst According to the lore provided to the press, the the United States stood firmly against radical agitation development of Aaron Sorkin’s new movie, “The Trial of of all stripes. the Chicago 7,” originated in 2007 when Steven It was a show trial in the classic sense, political theater Spielberg, who at the time was toying with making the meant to affirm the government’s power. That it failed film himself, summoned Sorkin to his home and urged in this goal owes largely to the chaotic drama that him to write the screenplay for him. Interestingly, transpired within the courtroom with, on the one side, Sorkin had never heard of the trial, but to a certain kind Judge Julius Hoffman, an overbearing authoritarian of educated liberal possessing a working knowledge of presence incapable of hiding his prejudice, and on the its historic importance — and this, one must assume, other, defendants who used the trial as another stage includes Spielberg — a courtroom battle of ideas with from which to project their various political messages. nothing less at stake than the soul of America must If the government’s purpose was to put the have seemed to be a perfect match for his very specific counterculture on trial, the defendants used their wit talents. and their argumentative skills to flip the script and put Sorkin, after all, has dedicated his career to litigating the establishment on trial, which is exactly the kind of our country’s ongoing political and cultural crises. His is thing that happens in almost every play, movie, or the drama of the debate club and the courtroom drama television episode Aaron Sorkin has ever written. is his ideal form. Since 1989, when his breakout play “A Is it any wonder, then, that as the George W. Bush Few Good Men” premiered on Broadway, he’s administration and its War on Terror and extraordinary dramatized his conviction that enlightened ideas rendition and extra-legal Guantanamo Bay tethered to reasoned argument have the power to incarcerations and quagmire in Iraq and all the rest was sway the populace toward a greater commitment to the supposed to be coming to an end, replaced (hopefully, civic good. then it seemed, inevitably) by either Hillary Clinton or And the trial of the Chicago 7 — or the Chicago 8, Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg would turn to Aaron depending on who’s counting and how — is the mother Sorkin to write a movie celebrating the anti-war of all courtroom dramas. activists of a previous generation? From the point of view of a successful liberal entertainer, there couldn’t To understand why, one needs a bit of context: The have been a better man for the job. men on trial had organized large protests against the Vietnam War to coincide with the 1968 Democratic Sorkin must have seen this as well. After he wrote a Convention. The protests exploded in violence when draft of the screenplay for Spielberg, the project fell the Chicago police force tried to shut them down (an through (as these things tend to do in Hollywood) and event later determined to be a “police riot”). And after both men went on to focus on other work. Then, ten the Democrats lost the election, the leaders were years later, with Donald Trump in office and the arrested and charged with conspiracy to cross state #Resistance on the rise and the #MeToo movement lines “with the intent to incite, organize, promote, bringing another powerful man down nearly every day encourage, participate in, and carry out a riot.” The trial and every other type of political division you could that followed was an attempt by the Nixon think of again flooding the air like tear gas, he decided administration to show the citizens of our nation that to make it himself. Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’ 2 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM The film he’s come up with is as committed to his vision “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” of the higher ideals of our nation as anything he’s every The difference is that this time the subject under made. discussion is revolution. And oddly, for a film in which Sorkin is the best advocate for civic engagement our the heroes preach revolution in nearly every scene, entertainment culture has produced since Frank Capra. “The Trial of the Chicago 7” turns out to be a passionate He inspires with his morally passionate, hyper- defense of the system they themselves are committed articulate heroes, always ready — nay, eager — to to overthrowing. sacrifice their self-interest on the crucible of their A large part of Sorkin’s appeal derives from the liberal principles. That they sometimes lose is part of palpable sense one gets when watching his work that the fun; it ennobles them and his audience along with he stands for something. What he stands for is a set of them. There’s redemption, catharsis, in seeing the beliefs that can best be described as the Democratic righteous martyred. The audience cheers through its Party platform, that paradoxical alliance of meritocratic tears because, though the hero lost, he was righteous, elitism, identity-based appeals for equal justice, he was right on the merits, and that’s the thing that comfort with the market, and faith that the institutions really matters. controlling our country — be they governmental, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” does all of this. And it corporate, military, or legal — would be forces for the contains all the other usual Sorkinian tropes: The action good if only the right people, the most intelligent, mostly transpires not through action or change but socially-conscious, and, most of all, liberal people, were through rapid-fire arguments over ideas. Every guiding them. He’s the bard of the engaged Democrat character, no matter how humble, has the entirety of and his body of work reaffirms the liberal’s faith in Wikipedia crammed into his or her brain and they spool American Democracy’s value, in the system’s value, as out, in jazzy little monologues, the historical and a bulwark against tyranny, especially the tyranny of the intellectual context of whatever it is they’re discussing Republican Party and the multitudinous oppressive in a given scene. There are powerful people who may strains it has come to symbolize in our society. sometimes be venal, but even then, are guided by In this way, Sorkin’s artistry is that of a highly-polished deeply-held convictions. There are people with less propagandist. power whose ability to make persuasive cases for their own beliefs are underestimated by the powerful. Just look at “The West Wing,” his purest achievement. There’s that morally-passionate hero, a stand-in for Throughout the long dark years of the Bush Sorkin himself, who’s always clean-cut, always administration, this show’s weekly, wishful, alternate conflicted and misunderstood, yet somehow magnetic; reality was the only solace for countless over- he carries the moral truth in his body, it’s all he is, his educated, professional-class people. The kind who read whole personality, and when his meaning is finally The New Yorker. The kind who watch “The Daily Show” understood, the false truths of everyone else in the and donate to NPR. The kind who felt a profound story will melt and the world will be made whole. (In national destiny, so long deferred, had finally been “Chicago 7,” this role is filled by the Students for a achieved when Barack Obama was elected and saw this Democratic Society leader Tom Hayden, whom I will get new leader as nothing less than the savior for our to below). A pall of seriousness hangs over the whole nation. I was, in many ways, among them. thing, and why wouldn’t it — nothing less is at stake than the future of civilized society. I’m not so sure the Chicago 7 — the real Chicago 7 who were really on trial back in 1969 — would feel the same You’ve seen this film before. It’s “The Social Network.” way about “The West Wing” or Obama, or Aaron It’s “A Few Good Men.” It’s Sorkin’s recent Broadway Sorkin’s vision of progressive politics, though. adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s every episode ever of “The West Wing” and “The Newsroom” and even These men consisted of the leaders of three separate Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’ 3 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM leftist factions” Dave Dellinger, Rennie Davis and Tom severed from economic politics and, notwithstanding Hayden, movement leaders who ran the National Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Democrats hadn’t Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, yet mastered the art of pandering to people’s identity- known colloquially as the MOBE, and their close cousin derived anxieties and fears. the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and Also, the Democrats were the party responsible for focused their energy around traditional issue-based starting the war. demonstrations’ Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the figureheads for the Yippies, a bunch of anarcho-leftists, The Chicago 7 descended on Chicago not to condemn who used theatrics to agitate for a wild reevaluation of the Republicans but to condemn the Democrats.