Presswatch / Dole and the Depraved
Corry, John
Dole and the Depraved by John Corry Perhaps it was because liberalism is now a spent force, or perhaps it was because its apologists have all turned sulky and sour. Whatever the reason, the most...
...The New York Times knew a good thing when it saw it...
...Even if Dole were right, which he was, it would not do to line up with a Republican candidate...
...But Hollywood is the principal means by which the American image is spread across the nation and the world...
...The V chip, long advocated by liberals, is a very bad idea...
...its policies already had been brought to public attention by Bill Bennett (Dole's "partner in virtuousness," according to Rich) and C. Delores Tucker, the head of the National Political Congress of Black Women (whom Rich, for obvious reasons, declined to mention...
...treatment the Times usually reserves for wars and other cataclysms, and it was a sign the editors thought that Dole had done something controversial or embarrassing...
...A Times editorial insisted that "no one has ever dropped dead from viewing `Natural Born Killers' or listening to gangster rap records," and in the next day's paper, under a six-column headline— "Weekend Moviegoers Give a Big Thumbs Down to Dole's Accusation"—was a story to prove it...
...according to his aides, he only had read the reviews of the movies or the rap lyrics...
...There isn't a single entertainment executive I've spoken to since Mr...
...The Senator seems less interested in evenhandedly addressing a cultural crisis than in anointing a Willie Horton for '96...
...His speech, reportedly written in part by Mari Maseng, the wife of George Will, was still singular...
...Rich attacked him on all the usual grounds—pandering to the Christian Coalition, wanting to kill public television, and so forth...
...The guidelines for this came down early...
...This included a metaphysical analysis of Pulp Fiction, too convoluted to be summarized here, but adequately represented by its cute headline: "A Digression on the Theology of `Pulp Fiction,' With Special Reference to the Relevance of Burger Names to Ethical Relativism...
...The Globe was trying, but it sounded confused...
...Dole says it is, why do white bands get a free pass...
...it was also his way of avoiding any discussion of gun control, or the urgent need to fund public television, while he deliberately inflamed anti-Semitism...
...That was an interesting but not original touch...
...The responses were predictable and unworthy of note, although there was a perverse fascination in watching some of the entertainment figures argue their cases on television...
...Consider this excerpt from an editorial in the Boston Globe entitled "Dole's Knock on Hollywood": Dole is exaggerating when he says that "our popular culture threatens to undermine the character of the nation...
...Obviously, Rich knew all of this...
...Dole had criticized Hollywood before—for promoting "casual violence and even more casual sex"—but by displaying his new attack as prominently as it did, the Times had confused the issue...
...Rich wrote: If pop music is the social pollutant Mr...
...The Times once observed a distinction between news and opinion, but the practice has long since died...
...The New Yorker was skeptical about "the frisson-seeking movie critic who wants his 'Pulp Fiction' and cannot see that having it might help explain why he cannot allow his children out after five o'clock in the afternoon...
...T he press, however, had trouble with that...
...Every story that was to appear in the Times about Dole and Hollywood would have a mandatory paragraph pointing that out...
...T he Times also reported that film and music executives were terribly angry about what Dole had said...
...But then Rich reached more deeply into the recesses of what passes now for liberal argumentation...
...Thus, on the one hand, Dole waswrong...
...The assumption is that television programs can be given uniform ratings like the movies' PG, G, or R. The V chip would then lock out, say, R. However, the board that rates the movies deals with fewer than 1,000 hours of movies a year...
...A 17-year-old high school junior said she thought Dole's speech was "really bad...
...The vote took place at night, and it may be the Senators were tired...
...The implication, of course, was that Dole was a hypocrite, full of sanctimony and partisan politics...
...His liberalism rests only on his anti-conservatism, and he has no interest in government or policy...
...Dole said the giant media companies—Time Warner, in particular—were flooding America with "nightmares of depravity...
...0 The American Spectator August 1995 51...
...This is the kind of...
...The frisson-seeking critic doesn't understand...
...It ought to have looked to its corporate owner, the Times, for clarification...
...The reluctance to look honestly at the pop culture is endemic...
...Buchanan may have drifted off course when he insisted on citing the Sermon on the Mount and millstones around someone's neck, although otherwise he was succinct...
...The one thing Dole's speech was not, it seems, was a serious statement about the debasement of the popular culture...
...on the other hand, Hollywood, if it chooses, can uplift both the national culture and America's world image...
...It seems he had neglected to have a "dialogue," and did not understand the rights of "creative artists...
...and it owns 50 percent of Interscope Records, whose "artists" include Snoop Doggy Dogg (facing a murder charge), Dr...
...Pulp Fiction splatters blood and brains all over the screen...
...David Brooks noted in Commentary recently that liberalism at the Times was once represented by columnists like James Reston, Tom Wicker, Flora Lewis, and Anthony Lewis...
...The actor Alec Baldwin, for example, surly, rude and apparently not very bright, accused Lynne Cheney of "incredible ethical bankruptcy" on a Sunday edition of "Crossfire...
...Anti-Semitism is a charge that may be made without fear of attracting any penalty...
...He also accused him of "chillingly invoking the McCarthy era...
...obviously, too, it did not matter...
...Dole's speech who hasn't echoed Billy Crystal's comments during Dan Quayle's fling with "Murphy Brown": "Every time they say the phrase `Hollywood elite,' you can hear the unspoken word 'Jew...
...Putnam's Sons...
...Not long ago Rich made a valuable find: sinister passages in Pat Robertson's The New World Order that seemed to prove to him that Robertson was promoting satanic theories about Jewish conspiracies...
...Conservatives are supposed to oppose bureaucracies like that, and the House Republicans ought to correct the Senate's mistake...
...Does the fact that its chief executive is named Levin play particularly well in some far-right GOP quarters...
...Let us agree now that Dole wants the Christian Coalition to support him and John Corry, a former New York Times media critic, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
...not Phil Gramm...
...None may dare call this twisted or crazy, of course, and most likely it will continue...
...In fact, in his speech Dole had named a white band, the odious Cannibal Corpse, and one could think of several reasons for singling out Time Warner that had nothing to do with the name of its chief executive...
...They wrote about government and policy...
...N one of this may have been edifying, but at least it was not ugly...
...Old stereotypes of Hollywood liberals were upheld nicely...
...He did not threaten government action—Democrats are more likely to do that—but he did point out what any civilized person knows to be true: that the pop culture has become a sewer, and we face a crisis of moral decay...
...Baldwin was upset because Cheney supported Dole but had not criticized Bob Packwood for his unspeakable crimes against women...
...Let us also agree that Dole cannot draw a deep breath without thinking about politics...
...The United States is greater than the sum of its movies, TV shows and pop songs...
...and for another thing, it is unworkable...
...For one thing, it sullies the First Amendment by putting Congress in an area where it does not belong...
...Best of all, it is impossible to disprove, and so it will simply sit there like a cloud of swamp gas...
...She also said she had seen Natural Born Killers seven times, and had never been moved to commit murder...
...N o one may know where the debate over the popular culture will go next, but there is one ominous sign...
...Dre (serving a work-release sentence for violating probation on an earlier assault charge), and Tupac Shakur (serving an 18-monthto-4-and-a-half-year sentence for sexual abuse...
...The cloud may even expand...
...Dole, he suggested, was a racist and anti-Semite...
...Dreck is patronized or excused...
...Dole's speech, he said, was the finest he had ever delivered...
...He also said they were "putting profit ahead of common decency," and that they ought to be held accountable...
...Then it went on to the more serious business of blaming conservatives for the Oklahoma bombing...
...There was also producer Norman 50 The American Spectator August 1995 Lear...
...A few days after Dole gave his speech, the Times Sunday magazine devoted almost its entire issue to a meditation on the nature of evil...
...Whatever the reason, the most remarkable thing about Bob Dole's criticism of Hollywood movies and gangster rap was not what he said, but what was said about it...
...And why is only the gangsta rap of Time Warner, not its foreign-owned competitors, suitable for naming names...
...Dole's singling out of a corporation whose chief executive was named Levin confirmed Rich's thinking so neatly...
...Since then, he has regularly interpreted Republican politics in terms of those same theories...
...Liberalism, however, no longer has much to do with ideas, and the dominant liberal voice at the Times is now that of Frank Rich...
...Lear, meanwhile, kept sputtering: "I want to suggest," "I would like to address," "May I broaden this discussion," "Please let me finish," and so on...
...The Times slyly noted that Dole had not seen all the movies or heard all the rap songs he was criticizing...
...Shortly afterwards, though, the Senate voted to require the manufacturers of television sets to install the so-called V chip, a device that would allow parents to lock out violent programs that are supposedly unsuitable for children...
...As a domestically-owned corporation it is more susceptible to criticism than its foreign-owned competitors...
...By contrast, there are more than 11 million hours of television programming a year, and the only way they could be uniformly rated would be by setting up something like George Orwell's Ministry of Truth...
...Liberals automatically condone the charge, while conservatives are afraid to condemn it...
...Apparently it was Dole's way of kissing up to the Christian Coalition, and putting one over on Phil Gramm...
...If Hollywood tones down the violence, it can uplift the entire culture...
...Dole was a ripe target...
...Commentators had to find a middle ground, no matter how soggy or murky...
...They might have been dull, but everyone knew they were serious...
...Oliver Stone had said that, too...
...His specialty is the ad hominem attack...
...For authentic ugliness, we must return to the Times and to a column by Frank Rich...
...Dole said he wanted the entertainment industry to act on its own, and insisted he did not favor government action...
...It played the first story about the speech above the fold, under a two-column headline, on the far left side of page one, with a generous display of pictures...
...For a moment, though, it had been right...
...The old liberal warhorse turned up on Ted Koppel's "Nightline" to argue with Pat Buchanan...
...Eventually he made his point: the problem is not movies or rap but the 30-second campaign spot...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
