Lieberman Not Going Hollywood
— -- Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman says he’ll continue his campaign to improve Hollywood’s moral values. Meanwhile, the Clintons held a star-studded fund-raiser in Tinseltown.
ABCNEWS.com
Aug. 13 — Sen. Joseph Lieberman will be a headliner in Los Angeles this week, but he’s not going Hollywood. The Democratic vice-presidential candidate may have a prime-time role at his party’s convention, which opens Monday in Los Angeles, but Lieberman said today that he will not back away from his criticism of the entertainment industry — even though show business interests are some of the most reliable supporters of the Democrats.
“I’m going to keep appealing to them to draw a line,” Lieberman said today on ABCNEWS’ This Week.
“There’s so much violence, so much sex, so much incivility,” he said. “It makes it very hard for parents to give their kids values.”
Movie And Music Money
Lieberman’s comments come even as his party engages in a massive round of entertainment-related fund-raisers this week.
Saturday night, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinon held a fund-raiser for her New York Senate campaign that included concert performances by a number of star singers, including Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Cher, and Michael Bolton. The event was expected to bring in a minimum of $1 million.
This morning, Barbra Streisand was hosting a brunch for President Clinton’s presidential library that could raise as much as $10 million. And Streisand, among others, is planning to sing at a fund-raiser for Gore on Thursday that may rake in another $2.5 million.
“I love movies, I love music,” Lieberman said. But he added that a future Gore-Lieberman administration would endeavor “to improve the moral future of America” in addition to working on traditional policy matters.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet The Press today, Lieberman conceded that, if elected, he would stop presenting the “Silver Sewer” awards that he and William Bennett, former Education Secretary under President Reagan, have given out in recent years to companies they call “cultural polluters.”
“There are certain things that a vice president doesn’t do thata senator can do,” Lieberman said.
Tough, But Independent
Privately, the entertainment executives have had a mixed reaction to Gore’s selection of the senator.
“When Lieberman runs around the country and says that people in this town are morally vacuous, people don’t respond well to that because it is not true,” says one longtime Hollywood producer. “And [Lieberman] knows it is not true.”
But others in the industry are more tolerant of Lieberman’s outspoken ways.
“[Lieberman] is a tough but independent man of great integrity,” says Andy Spahn, a Democratic fund-raiser in Hollywood and a spokesman for Dreamworks, owned avid Democratic supporters Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. “He doesn’t pull his punches — including the ones that have come our way.”
Outspoken Critic
For years, Lieberman has been a persistent critic of Tinseltown, recently writing that “on-air violence remains pervasive and excessive.”
“Matters are worse when it comes to sexual content,” he wrote for an upcoming issue of Blueprint, a magazine published by the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democrat group Lieberman chairs. “As even the casual viewer has noticed, there has been an explosion of crude, rude and lewd material in prime time.”
CBS and the Fox Entertainment Network have been among the recipients of the “Silver Sewer” award.
Last year, Lieberman teamed up with Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to release an “Appeal to Hollywood,” urging executives — including Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin and News Corp. CEO Rupurt Murdoch — to change the “increasingly toxic popular culture” influencing the nation’s children. (Disney is the parent company of ABCNEWS.com).
“This is not an attack on Hollywood,” Lieberman said in a statement at the time. “It is an appeal to Hollywood to work with us as a national community in a joint effort to reduce the corrosive messages the media too often send our kids.”
Support From Left and Right
Despite the friction that may exist between Lieberman and those in the entertainment industry, Democrats and Republicans agree that Lieberman will add a strong moral presence to the ticket.
In 1998, Lieberman was the first high-profile Democrat to publicly condemn President Clinton’s affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Many top Republicans, including Gore’s presidential rival, George W. Bush, responded to the Monday announcement by acknowledging that Lieberman is “a good man.”
Others downplay the matter by pointing out that Gore ultimately will set the agenda on issues important to the entertainment industry. “He is in fact at the top of the ticket,” says Democratic consultant Bill Carrick. “He will make the decisions and he will stand by his positions.”
And some say there is one particular way Lieberman could actually help protect the interests of the entertainment industry.
“We certainly don’t agree with many of his statements regarding the entertainment industry,” Spahn says. “But on the flip side, there is no stronger supporter of the First Amendment than the senator.”
— Julia Campbell contributed to this report.