Aaron Sorkin is only just now finding out Hollywood has a diversity problem

The West Wing writer is a golden case of, 'talk about late to the party'

Nobody wants to be the last person in the room to get the joke, and neither should you want to be the last person in the room to realise that Hollywood isn't some magical gender- and race-blind meritocracy.

Despite having worked in the industry for over 20 years, Aaron Sorkin has only just now realised that people who aren't white dudes may have something of a harder time in the filmmaking business.

It's apparently an issue he barely knew anything about until he attended the Writers Guild Festival over the weekend; when he asked the painfully obvious question (via Variety), "Are you saying that women and minorities have a more difficult time getting their stuff read than white men and you’re also saying that [white men] get to make mediocre movies and can continue on?"

In a discussion panel hosted by radio host and film critic Elvis Mitchell, Sorkin was apparently in total disbelief that the situation could be anything other than, as he asserted, a complete meritocracy. Mitchell teased, "You may be confusing meritocracy with meretricious, happens all the time."

The panel then tried to move discussion on to another topic, but Sorkin was still fixated; later asking, "You’re saying that if you are a woman or a person of colour, you have to hit it out of the park in order to get another chance?"

The story, at least, has something of a happy ending, as Sorkin's great revelation was swiftly followed by an offer of assistance. "What can I do [to help]?" Sorkin said. "I do want to understand what someone like me can do … but my thing has always been: 'If you write it, they will come.'"

An infuriating moment for any non-white male member of the panel's audience, surely, but if these kinds of cringe-inducing moments of education are what it takes to get Hollywood to wake up a little - well, we can just all do our best to suppress the sighs and eye-rolling.