Culture Vultures: Color Television

...You know he was written out last season...

...What kind of sitcom jokes this will result in is hard to say: "A Protestant, a Jew, an African-American, a Latino gay, a pre-op transsexual and a 38o lb...

...Blacks watch much more TV than white folks...

...You could install an indestructible grievance culture so eager to take offense that nothing as prosaic as reality is allowed to get in the way, the sort of culture where an indignant subordinate demands that his city government validate his ignorance of the word "niggardly" by sacking his boss...

...DuBois and the NAACP's other founders would be mystified by the idea that targeting this idiot narcotic even more precisely at blacks .is any way to Advance Colored People...

...Some of the initiatives that Les announced today," said the ABC man, "we were also planning to announce"--if only President Mfume had let them...

...It was all just an unfortunate misunderstanding...

...Despite the utter economic irrelevance of Mfume's membership, the big white advertisers were getting nervous, so the networks hastily decided to institute the Mfume quota system...

...The only economic muscle a guy who watches ten hours ofTV a day has is with his local Domino'sdelivery boy...

...I assumed a few might even get angry at the notion of racial classification in the televisual arts...

...President Mfume took umbrage at this and refused to allow them to address the meeting, keeping them offstage and out of sight for two and a half hours until finally the Executive Pen-Pushers had enough and walked out...

...It's probably a sliding scale: For the third season, you'll need a Hispanic...

...So let's not fret for NBC...

...Then he can start railing against the executives for deliberately foisting their debilitating video opiate on the vulnerable African-American community...

...I doubt it...

...He'd tell his members to go read a book, take a walk, grab a bus to South CarThe only economic muscle a guy who watches ten hours of "IV a day has is with the pizza delivery boy...

...he exclaimed...

...Wherever he is now, W.E.B...

...wheelchairbound learning-disabled Native American go into a bar and the guy says, 'Sorry, we stopped serving the writing team for Leave It to Beaver in the x4th season.'" But it's no laughing matter...

...the nets had always intended to introduce a black best friend in Episode Three...

...4 hours a week...

...Not the best gag in the world, but, addressing the National Press Club in Washington, the Russian prime minister didn't improve matters with his ponderous re-telling-"It's a small car, very convenient for medium-class people, for instance...

...Stepashin got around to the punch line, it had evolved into: '"Well, in the States, you kill Negroes...

...You can't blame Mfume for enjoying kicking the suits around...

...I'm home...

...A nd so far it's all proceeding to plan...

...So, had this system been in place, say, halfa century ago, the Theatre Guild would have announced that, after a triumphant first year of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, the writing team for the new season would be Rodgers, Hammerstein, and The Notorious B.I.G...

...Negroes or beetles, it fell flat with the Press Club audience, and the prime minister's foray into stand-up died...

...The fellows who created the sitcom may not need any new writers, the humor may very well depend on the particular relationships of the existing writing team, but nonetheless NBC will provide them with a minority writer, paid for not by the production team but directly by the network...

...W.E.B...

...What's more interesting is just what the NAACP hopes to accomplish through this victory...

...Besides, networks have always been spineless...

...When the NAACP called a "diversity hearing" in Hollywood in November, CBS sent along President Les Moonves, but ABC, NBC, and Fox committed the catastrophic l~se maiest~ of dispatching mere vice presidents...

...He was tired of seeing honky husbands on all-white sitcoms open the front door and go, "Hi, 40 March 2 0 o o _9 The American Spectator honey...

...He may see more SUV ads than the average SUV owner, but the chances of him rousing himself from the couch and joining their number are pretty remote...

...Network TV, said Mfume, was "a virtual whitewash...

...After advertisers forced the cancellation of his own show, Nat "King" Cole remarked, "Madison Avenue's afraid of the dark...

...To be honest, the ruthless ex-interior minister doesn't really breeze anywhere-just ask the Chechens--but some spin doctor or other had advised him that, in the debased form of popular democracy practiced in the United States, politicians are expected to show their lighter side...

...to be more reflective of our cultural diversity...

...and the title would be changed to Oklahomie...

...A black gangsta rapper who writes all my homophobic gags...

...In the days following his complaint, ABC added minorities to five of their shows, NBC to six...

...When this curious fact emerged at a conference on censorship, Ed Weinberger, producer of'q]ae Mary Tyler Moore Show," was impressed: "There really is a tooth fairy...

...But I've just added my first visible minority to the team," I protested...

...denounce this attack on free expression...

...He wanted the courts to force the Federal Communications Commission to establish "affirmative action" for minorities on sitcoms--the same kind of quota system the NAACP champions so vigorously in other areas of employment...

...That's some average, and Mfume seemed to take a certain pride in the statistic, since it represents, according to him, a lot of"economic muscle" they could bring to bear on the big advertisers...

...Oh, don't be so silly, darling...

...In African-American homes, the television set is on for an average of7o...

...But it's certainly not doing anything for the old brain muscle: A recent study in an upscale suburb of Cleveland, puzzled by the way African-American students were underperforming at school, found that middleclass black kids watched twice as much TV as middle-class white kids...

...In fact, it's unlikely he has any muscle, economic or otherwise: The amount of time spent in front of the box may or may not be unconnected with the disproportionate predisposition of black Americans to obesity, diabetes, etc...

...I assumed most people would have the same reaction I did" They'd hoot with derision at this latest feeble stage in America's dismal trickle-down apartheid...

...After all, whenever it's suggested that an artist might want to scrape some of the elephant dung offthe Virgin Mary in order to avoid giving offense, the cultural community rises up as one in order to MaRK STERN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...

...Today the networks are still afraid of the dark, and you can't really blame them: Getting your teeth pulled by a homophobia-sensitive gay dentist is far less painful than attracting the attention of Kweisi Mfume...

...And, as it happens, I never feel more of a minority than when the subject of minorities comes up...

...DuBois must surely marvel at a world where the latest battle in the sta-uggle for civil rights is the need to boost the number of hours blacks spend in front of the television set...

...Say, what happened to our amusing black next-door neighbor...

...So, aside from complaining about "ethnic purification," Mfume threatened a lawsuit...

...So he told a joke...

...Deciding the composition of a creative team by racial quota is surely equally an assault on artistic freedom...

...Mfume has been in the racial grievance business so long he seems incapable of looking at the world through anything other than the wrong end of the telescope...

...Blacks' favorite TV shows are apparently those of the World Wrestling Federation and Jerry Springer, with his even stagier fights...

...But then, if blacks switched the TV off now and then, they might get around to pondering whether their interests are really sewed by so-called community leaders like Kweisi Mfume...

...NBC angrily denied the charge that they were in thrall to a gay Jersey dentist on the grounds that, though still in the Garden State, he was now a psychotherapist...

...The official line was that they'd been planning to do this all along: The NAACP had just been misled by the sitcoms' whites-only pilots...

...for the fifth, Marv Albert in his peephole basque...

...Even then, though, the hapless veeps were anxious not to rile the main man...

...The American Spectator _9 Ma r c h 2 o o o 41...

...Washington's official Federal News Service managed to lose a little more in translation than usual and bowdlerized its transcript of the occasion into "Well, in the States, you kill beetles...

...The nation's commentators are largely silent on the matter, no doubt nervous lest their own pasty complexions fall under scrutiny...

...But instead Mfume thinks the networks should make their shows more appealing to blacks, so that presumably blacks will watch even more TV and maybe even smash that coveted loo-hours-a-week barrier...

...And the only people who got angry were various Hispanic, Asian-American, and Native American groups who felt they'd been left behind when the NAACP's Kweisi Mfume barged ahead and stitched up his deal...

...But no one laughed...

...For example, a week or two back, NBC signed a formal surrender with the NAACP, under which it agreed to hire at least one minority writer on any series that runs to a second season...

...The Russian, reluctant to say it's too expensive for most Soviet workers, replies: "And what about your lynchings...

...As I noted in these pages a couple of years ago, it was NBC who, back in the seventies, referred any joke on homosexuality for vetting by a gay dentist in New Jersey...

...Well, our TV networks have been down this path before...

...Around the time Kweisi Mfume started his great campaign, Sergei Stepashin, then Boris Yeltsin's prime minister of the week, was breezing through Washington on a goodwill trip...

...for the fourth, a lesbian...

...I got a call from Kweisi Mfume just the other day, threatening an economic boycott unless this column more vigorously demonstrated its commitment to diversity...

...A bit of an old one, actually--dating from the good old days of the Cold War, when it used to go something like this: Soviet guy shows visiting American the latest small Ukrainian car...

...olina for an anti-flag rally, confirm whitey's stereotypes and become a crack dealer- at least you'll get out of the house occasionally...

...Watching the NAACP/network dispute, Stepashin might have modified his punchline: In the States, there's more than one way to kill Negroes...

...The NAACP also threatened a black economic boycott of these white shows' advertisers...

...You could, for example, create a powerful class of race commissars and shakedown artists determined to maintain black people as a permanent victim class and whitey on a ~ermanent guilt trip...

...I shouldn't worry ifI were them...

...Thus, if an African-American and a Caucasian are both equally qualified to play the part of Lucille Bali's visiting brother from Milwaukee, then the part should go to the African-American actor...

...The American asks how much it costs...

...So you'd think, rather than bragging about this statistic, the head of a National Association that exists, after all, for the Advancement of Colored People would be aghast...

...This issue arose last summer when the country's oldest black civil rights group attacked ABC, CBS, and NBC for keeping African-American actors out of their new sitcoms...

...By the time Mr...