I love to hate Aaron Sorkin, but this was not always the case. I had unbridled fanaticism for the genius that gave us “A Few Good Men,” “The West Wing” and “Sports Night.” But after “The Social Network” in 2010, Sorkin got a little too pompous and cantankerous for my humble taste.

Sorkin’s utopian, bleeding heart liberal magnum opus, “The Newsroom,” began its second season on Sunday. Season one premiered last summer to HBO-level ratings, but also to scalding reviews from pundits and fans. The show became a galvanizing cultural sensation everybody loved to hate.

Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times said the show “chokes on its own sanctimony.” Jake Tapper of ABC News, in perhaps the most accurate critique, said, “but they believe that responsibility consists mostly of criticizing Republicans.

When season two premiered Sunday night to expectedly high ratings, it became clear that “The Newsroom” had fashioned hate-watching in a narrative medium.

Typically, hate-watching is an integral part of sports and reality television.

We detest the elite players and teams that perennially dominate professional sports, but we don’t hate ourselves for enjoying the games. We do hate ourselves for enjoying reality television.

In sports, the hatred emanates from the individuals who make us want to watch in the first place. Everybody roots against the Miami Heat because LeBron James mercilessly forced us all to waste an hour of our lives so we could learn of his next employer.

In reality television, premises of shows like “The Bachelorette” and “Jersey Shore” are so outrageous and the characters are so vindictive, yet we find both impossible to ignore. We hate ourselves for taking so much pleasure from such a malevolent reflection of human nature.

Like LeBron, Sorkin is the best at what he does. Based on his sustained greatness and the ubiquity of modern media, we see him more than our extended family. He appears on the Internet, staring back at us with that smoothed-over grin and butterscotch mane.

With “The Newsroom,” Sorkin is the star individual who draws us in, and his outrageous premises and hysterical characters keep us attracted because they are impossible to ignore, like the reality TV shows we watch.

In its first season, “The Newsroom” was excoriated for its breathtaking idealism, soap-opera romantics and overwhelming polemics.

The show’s protagonist, Will McAvoy, is a suddenly reborn news anchor. Among McAvoy’s associates at Atlantis Cable News, there are more damsels and dudes in distress than in a Nicholas Sparks novel. Among the non-fictional fiction of the show’s broadcasts, there was enough partisan dogma to make Ann Coulter cringe.

We hate ourselves for taking so much pleasure in the political vitriol and cheesy office drama, but like the professional sports and reality TV we watch, we just cannot resist.

This is the point of connection that makes “The Newsroom” so hate-watchable. Sorkin’s brilliance and plot design simultaneously make us hate ourselves and keep us addicted to the source of our hatred.

In sports, we hate the player. In reality television, we hate the game. With “The Newsroom,” the player makes us hate the game and vice versa.

Jarrad Saffren is a senior television, radio and film and political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jdsaffre@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @UncleSamsFilter.

Published on July 19, 2013 at 11:02 am