POLITICS: Earth to Moonves
Fund, John H.
POLITICS JOHN H. FUND Earth to Moonves HERE ARE INNUMERABLE REASONS why much of the country is in political revolt against media elites. Exhibit A: Has Viacom, the corporate behemoth that owns...
...Robert Byrd of West Virginia suggested that, instead, Moonves program a reality show that relocated network executives to "the sticks," where they would have to find a job...
...Audiences would watch the teens venture into the "outside" world...
...You'd have to be an idiot not to hear what is going on in this country," Moonves said back in 1996...
...That's as ludicrous a statement as ever passed the pen of a corporate shill," says Robert Schroeder, a Pennsylvania journalist...
...UPN's executives claim they "have every intention of treating the Amish and their beliefs and their heritage with the utmost respect and decency...
...In 1998, CBS canceled the family-friendly Dr...
...They would view it as progress...
...His missteps have alienated older viewers and made advertisers nervous about what cultural trap he might fall into next...
...Then it outraged millions by carrying Janet Jackson's infamous MTV-produced Super Bowl halftime show...
...Making sport of the Amish community, where crime rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, and bankruptcy rates are minimal isn't something most Americans would view as funny...
...But clearly his mental radio receiver can't pick up cultural signals in certain regions of America...
...One asked Moonves why Viacom would allow UPN to manipulate and possibly alter a ceremony that could literally transform the lives of impressionable teenagers...
...Using so-called "hick hunts," the network intended to move an uneducated Appalachian family into an opulent West Coast mansion and invite the nation to laugh at their bumbling ways...
...Some 90 percent remain with the church...
...Now UPN has decided to single out the beliefs and practices of a religious group for humor...
...Right...
...In 2002, he was ridiculed by David Letterman on his own network for a four-day junket to Cuba during which he hobnobbed with Fidel Castro and got the dictator's autograph on a cigar box...
...Then, in front of millions of viewers, the Amish teens would make the life-determining decision about whether to keep their faith...
...But the Amish don't think the idea of treating them like a circus carnival act is very funny...
...The Amish worship God in each other's homes, and care for a disabled neighbor's crops and health in time of illness...
...The Amish don't have as good a lobbying group...
...Moonves enjoyed the question...
...He finally had to PHOTO BY RICHARD B. LEVINE OHN H. FUND shelve the show after union leaders and 43 members of Congress complained...
...Their lifestyle intrigued UPN executives into concocting a show in which they would put five Amish teens into a house with five "mainstream" teens...
...Exhibit A: Has Viacom, the corporate behemoth that owns both the CBS and UPN television networks, no sense of shame...
...JUNE 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37 Their lifestyle intrigued UPN executives into concocting a show in which they would put five Amish teens into a house with five "mainstream" teens...
...A total of 51 members of Congress, including Senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, sent Viacom a letter saying "we find it hard to imagine that anyone would single out five Native American teenagers in a similar fashion, making light of the process of defining their personal and religious identity in a world often at odds with their own culture...
...This summer it will air a reality show called Amish in the City, in which five 16year-old kids are plucked out of their cloistered world and put like "fish out of water" in some big city where they will interact with the outside world and all its temptations...
...They say it could be a hit along the lines of The Simple Life, in which society girls Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie lived with an Arkansas farm family for a month...
...He isn't comforted by the fact that two of the show's executive producers 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2004 worked on Devil's Playground, a 2002 documentary on the Amish that ran on Cinemax...
...Democratic Sen...
...It featured the son of an Amish preacher who becomes addicted to crystal meth and then becomes a dealer to support his habit...
...Moonves felt its audience was too female and too old...
...First, CBS had to dump its four-hour miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan onto its sister cable network Showtime because CBS president Les Moonves admitted it had gone "too far" in bashing the First Couple...
...Well, we couldn't do the Beverly Hillbillies," he quipped...
...The reference was to Moonves's aborted plans to launch a reality series called "The Real Beverly Hillbillies...
...The Amish are a Christian sect whose 200,000 members are concentrated in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania...
...asked Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies...
...T HIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME Les Moonves and Viacom have been exposed as culturally tone-deaf...
...Amish in the City does have some basis in fact...
...Where does a giant corporation get off thinking that it's entertaining to try to tempt young people to leave their religion...
...Last year, he admitted that the No...
...By comparison with the lifestyle of the jet-setting Moonves, the Amish's innocence and morality do appear pretty boring...
...They stress humility, family, and community, and live separated from the rest of the world...
...He dismissed the success of the religious show Touched by an Angel as a "fluke" and presided over an ill-fated effort to bring radio's raunchy Howard Stern to television...
...They want it back," he says...
...For that reason they don't use telephones, cars, and electricity...
...Quinn, Medicine Woman, even though it dominated its time slot...
...Moonves admitted the "phenomenal" opposition to the show left him "pretty surprised...
...Quinn...
...That makes his willingness to plunge ahead with the Amish project all the more surprising...
...They provide their own food, shelter, and clothing, but collect no welfare...
...1 viewer complaint to CBS remains his can-cella-tion of Dr...
...Amish teenagers often go through a rite of passage called "rumspringa" in which they are allowed to date, engage in mostly harmless forms of partying, and test their faith before taking up adult responsibilities...
...1/4 John H. Fund is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com...
...But some of their practices would be a much better model for American families...
...Nonetheless, TV critics were stunned last January when the show's concept was unveiled at a press tour in Los Angeles...
Vol. 37 • June 2004 • No. 5
