Lieberman in Hollywood: Will He Be Welcome?
Hollywood Shows Reluctant Support
for Gore Running Mate
By Julia Campbell
N E W Y O R K, Aug. 10
When Al Gore arrives in Los Angeles next week for the Democratic National Convention, the red carpets will be rolled out and Barbra Streisand will sing. The vice president will surely get a welcome rivaling the best of Hollywood extravaganzas.
The same may not be said, however, of Gore’s running mate, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Privately, there has been mixed reaction to Gore’s selection of the senator, a vocal critic of Hollywood and what he sees as its excesses of violence and sexual content in movies and television programs.
“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, who asked not to be identified. “And [Lieberman] knows it is not true.”
But Tinseltown has a long history of supporting Democratic candidates, and while many in the industry say they do not agree with the senator’s views, he is likely to be accepted merely because he is the running mate to Gore, a candidate many want to see in the White House.
Tough, But Independent
“[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.”
Democrats have had little trouble wooing over Hollywood. Although the GOP courts names like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Selleck and Pat Boone, the entertainment industry tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. On the money trail, Gore currently outpaces George W. Bush, with $900,000 to the Republican’s $700,000, in donations coming from show business sources this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The last Democratic convention held in Los Angeles, in 1960 for the nomination of John F. Kennedy, was awash in celebrity. Stars like Henry Fonda and Harry Belafonte stumped for the candidate on television. Years later, Bill Clinton would usher in a whole new era of Hollywood-infused politics. Much of the relationship that Clinton stoked during his two terms in office has carried over to Gore.
Outspoken Critic
For years, Lieberman has been an outspoken critic of what he says is gratuitous sex and violence on television and the silver screen. Lieberman wrote recently 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.”
In 1998, Lieberman, joined with Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett, the author of The Book of Virtues and head of the conservative think tank Empower America, to hand out “Silver Sewer” awards to people or companies the men felt were “cultural polluters.”
CBS earned one for airing a television show hosted by shock jock Howard Stern and for showing the taped death of one of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s patients on 60 Minutes. And last September, Lieberman and Bennett lambasted the Fox Entertainment Network for almost its entire fall lineup.
“The network has not yet worked its way up to the naked live execution, but viewers will see plenty of crass displays of nudity,” Lieberman said of the Fox network during a news conference.
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).
Lynne Cheney, the wife of GOP vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney, also signed the appeal.
“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
Whatever those in Hollywood think, many Democrats, as well as many Republicans, clearly approve of Lieberman as a running mate on the Democratic ticket. Several top Republican lawmakers in recent days have said they even believe Lieberman’s strong moral character will be valuable to Gore.
“At a time when families of all faiths feel their values under attack, Sen. Lieberman and I are part of a political alliance that is quite logically emerging between the orthodox Christians and Jews,” Brownback wrote in an op-ed piece published Wednesday in The New York Times.
It is unclear whether many in Hollywood truly feel under attack by Lieberman. But many acknowledge that the industry and Lieberman are not always on the same page when it comes to issues regarding film and television content.
“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.”
Others, including the Hollywood producer who asked not to be identified, say they believe Gore ultimately will set the agenda on issues important to the entertainment industry. “He is in fact at the top of the ticket,” Democratic consultant Bill Carrick in Los Angeles says of Gore. “He will make the decisions and he will stand by his positions.”
Hollywood Issue Front and Center
But the Hollywood issue is now more likely than ever to be on the national radar screen. Democrats drafting the party platform, which will be approved next week, have even added a component to deal with the subject of “responsible entertainment,” urging Hollywood to show more self-restraint and to strictly enforce movie ratings. “Parents and the entertainment industry must accept more responsibility,” a draft reads.
While the Republican party platform does not specifically target Hollywood, the party does address the “pollution of our culture,” and takes note of the “glorification of violence, glamorizing of drugs, the abuse of women and children, whether in music or videos, advertising, or tabloid journalism.”
Mark Honig, executive director of the bipartisan Parents Television Council, a group that is fighting to reduce violence and nudity in film and television, says he believes the addition of Lieberman to the ticket will force Hollywood to pay attention.
“It is clearly a signal to Hollywood that this will be a part of the national debate this election season,’’ Honig says.
Whatever the eventual impact, many agree that Hollywood will not likely condemn Gore’s choice for his running mate — next week or in the near future. “Clearly, the Hollywood crowd is not going to really object,” says conservative columnist Arianna Huffington.
“I think that is partly because Lieberman has called for self-restraint and that he has not called for censorship,” she says. “But a lot of [the Democrats] are so committed to Al Gore’s victory, I don’t think they are going to let anything stand in the way.”