MONEY talks. So is anyone really surprised that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman abruptly caved in on the issue of forcing Hollywood to put an end to violent and obscene entertainment?
Barely a week ago, in the wake of a Federal Trade Commission study blasting Hollywood’s marketing, Gore warned the industry’s movers and shakers that, as president, he would give them a “six-month deadline” to “clean up their act.” After that, he said, he would bring down the full weight of the federal government, passing a tough new law.
But now, he and Lieberman – who have spent the last month or so preaching morality from one end of the country to the other – are singing a different, and much softer, tune. No more angry sermons, no more preachy moralizing.
“We will nudge you, but we will never become censors,” a subdued Lieberman told 300 of Hollywood’s top political donors on Monday. “We’re both fans of the products that come out of the entertainment industry.”
Apparently reassured, the Hollywood heavy hitters coughed up $4.2 million to the Democratic National Committee – a record, The New York Times tells us, for a political fund-raiser at a private home.
This isn’t the first time Al Gore has staked a claim to a defense of traditional values and responsible entertainment, then turned tail and run. In fact, he was speaking out of both sides of his mouth on this issue even before Monday’s extremely profitable mea culpa session.
A “fan” of Hollywood’s products? Last week, Gore publicly denounced “a culture that glorifies violence and indecency.” Then, just hours later, he sat through a Radio City Music Hall event that raised $6.5 million from Hollywood for the Dems – an event featuring a John Leguizamo joke on Jews and oral sex that even Gore would have to call “indecent.”
Indeed, more than a year ago, Gore was playing down the FTC study that he more recently praised. Back then, rumors of the coming study had Hollywood on edge, so Gore went West to calm things down. The Los Angeles Times reported that, in numerous private meetings with Hollywood honchos, “Gore made clear that the study – disparaged by some in Hollywood as a witch hunt – was the president’s idea, and was initiated without his input.”
It worked; a spokesman for Dreamworks SKG told the paper that “many in the industry who had concerns” about Gore’s position “have been made more comfortable.”
It’s a familiar script for Al Gore: Take a strong position in public, then privately reassure the money men that he doesn’t really mean it. (The folks in Hollywood must understand how the game is played: They haven’t shut off the cash spigot to the Democratic ticket.)
Gore and his wife Tipper played just such a two-faced game in the late ’80s, when he first began running for president. The issue was Tipper’s crusade against “porn rock.” In her book “Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society,” she demanded that “every corporate giant – whether it produces chemicals or records – accept responsibility for what it produces” and demanded tough legislative action.
The campaign for record warning labels by her Parents Music Resource Center had prompted a Senate hearing on Sept. 19, 1985, at which she testified to a committee full of senators – including her husband.
But then the Gores set their sights on the White House and started singing a different tune in a desperate bid to capture Hollywood cash. In a secretly taped private meeting in an MCA executive dining room on Oct. 28, 1987, Al and Tipper repented their crusade – and especially that Senate hearing.
“If I could rewrite the script, I certainly would,” Tipper said, according to Daily Variety. She called the hearing “a mistake … that sent the wrong message. We sent the message that there’s going to be censorship, and that’s clearly not the case. I understand that the hearings frightened the entertainment industry.”
Al, meanwhile, tried to make his attendance at the 1985 hearing seem almost accidental. “I was not in favor of the hearing,” he said. “It was not a good idea.” (Untrue. An official transcript of the hearing shows Gore profusely congratulating Sen. John Danforth: “I would like to thank you and commend you for calling this hearing,” he said. “Because my wife has been heavily involved in the evolution of this issue, I have … really gained an education in what is involved.”)
Over the next few months, the Gores tried to show Hollywood just how hip they really were. They talked about their devotion to Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. “I was one of the earliest Springsteen fans,” Tipper told The Washington Post. “We are liberal-minded people.”
Today, even Holy Joe Lieberman is reading from that same script. “I must say I have a certain ribald side to me,” he told The Los Angeles Times this week, a far cry from the moralistic rhetoric of the past few weeks. But then, there are millions to be raked in – which is why Lieberman could tell Monday’s Hollywood meeting: “Your support here tonight really moves and encourages me.”
That’s doubtless true. But Gore and Lieberman’s blatant hypocrisy should sicken and outrage the rest of us.
E-mail: efettmann@nypost.com
