Hollywood on Trial

In the weeks since John Kerry's defeat in the presidential election, many Democratic politicians and the consultants who run their campaigns and various members of what Eric Alterman calls "the so-called liberal media" have suggested a variety of scapegoats to distract attention from the central strategic mistakes of the national Democratic party in recent years. Despite the obvious fact that decisive leadership and its relation to the war on terrorism was the driving gestalt of the campaign, many pundits pointed to gay marriage as a key to President Bush's victory. Despite the unprecedented turnout of younger voters and the fact that they were the only age group to favor John Kerry, numerous articles inaccurately claimed that the youth turnout did not increase or help the Democrats. Not surprisingly, that favorite whipping boy of the conventional wisdom crowd, liberal Hollywood, has now been added to the list of scapegoats – branded a supposed swing factor for the 22 percent of voters felt that "moral values" was the most important election issue.

Of course no one knows exactly what those voters who cited "moral values" meant. Democrats never had much of a chance at getting voters for whom abortion and gay marriage are litmus tests, so it's hard to figure out exactly which voters would have accepted Kerry's moderate position on those issues but would have switched from Bush to Kerry if the senator had expressed more moral dudgeon about Janet Jackson's breast – the appearance of which New York Times columnist William Safire bizarrely called "the social political event of the year." (Apparently the Super Bowl commercials for Cialis that discussed the perils of 4-hour erections are off limits for criticism by pro-corporate moralists of both parties.)

In a recent Los Angeles Times article Patrick Goldstein said "Hollywood took it on the chin" in the recent election. In fact, the entertainment business was much less of a factor in 2004 than it was in the two previous elections when the losers, Bob Dole in 1996 and Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000 specifically injected moral criticism of Hollywood into their campaigns, not because they could do anything about the popular culture but supposedly to show empathy for families appalled by coarseness and profanity.

Goldstein mentioned a handful of harsh references to President Bush made by assorted celebrities during the recent campaign (the same ones that Stephanie Mansfield of the right-wing Washington Times had cited a week before): Jennifer Aniston, the "Friends" actress who called Mr. Bush "a fucking idiot"; John Mellencamp, who described Mr. Bush as "a cheap thug"; and Cher, who called Bush "stupid and lazy." Then there was the Whoopi Goldberg joke, a pun based on the President's last name that she told at a Kerry fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall.

No one denies that some entertainers said stupid things at Kerry fundraisers and they should be criticized for the remarks. But there were literally thousands of entertainment/political events during the campaign, so why single out this handful? Certainly it's not the dirty words, given the widely documented profane outbursts by both Bush and Cheney. It may not be the smartest tactic to so bluntly insult a sitting president, but no entertainer remotely equaled the contempt that Republicans heaped on President Clinton. Congressman Dan Burton called him a "scumbag," and Jerry Fallwell enthusiastically hawked a video that accused Clinton of murder. No conservative columnists or politicians suggested that Republicans back away from them.

During a campaign season that included the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, an escalation in fighting with hundreds of U.S. forces killed, rising gas prices and unavailability of flu shots, is it actually plausible to suggest that Whoopi's joke or Jennifer Aniston's expletive had an effect on the election's outcome? They didn't do exit polls about that. The only Hollywood-related quote that was ever cited by the Bush campaign came from not from anyone in showbiz but from John Kerry himself, when he said the Radio City performers represented "the heart and soul of America." A simple "thank you" would have sufficed.