I've been watching The West Wing again (also Sorkin), and even though I really like the show, at times I cringe at how self-righteous and patronizing the writing can be.

One thing that made the show more palatable was the addition of Ainsley Hayes, a Republican who is hired by the White House on the president's insistence (and causes much grumbling from the other characters initially). She specifically calls out the self-righteous attitude of the other characters and their simplistic view of all Republicans as gun-toting hillbillies.

I stopped watching The Newsroom because it was both more extreme in its partisanship and in its oversimplification of the opposition. And it didn't have an Ainsley Hayes character (or at least not one as good).

I grew up as a very religious evangelical christian, and as such I grew up alongside many American evangelicals who would never vote for the baby-killing atheist Democrats.

And while I strongly disagree with most of their views, I've come to realize that this is not because they're stupid and I'm smart, or because they're mean and I'm kind, or because they're lazy and I am not, but rather most of the time it's because we just disagree on some very fundamental issues. If I were to accept their axioms to be true, they can provide coherent and perhaps even convincing arguments. I know this because I believed much of what they believe myself. Sure, I was younger, but I wasn't stupid. Or at least not more stupid than I am now...