THE MAJOR-PARTY APOLOGISTS, especially the Democrats, are pleading with voters not to jump on any Nader bandwagon. They’re insisting there really is a difference between Gore and Bush, enough of a difference that you’ve gotta choose only one of those two–lest the nation be stuck with the other of those two.
Yet the Gore supporters’ claims of difference (which seem to involve such secondary issues as how quickly Social Security funds can be fed into the control of Wall Street speculators) continue to be contradicted by the increasingly-apparent similarities.
Both love “free” trade and the rule of global financiers. Both want to turn up the federal $ spigot to big weapons contractors. Both would keep up the dumb ol’ “war on drugs,” and pay as little lip service as possible to campaign-finance reform. Both claim today’s is the best of all possible economic worlds; even though real-world wage and earning-power equations get decreasingly rosy the further you stray from the top-20 income percentile.
And both camps have said, or at least implied, that Something Must Be Done against all the sexy, threatening, violent, or just plain icky material out there in our pop-culture landscape these days.
They’re not saying it loudly or direclty enough to threaten the media conglomerates the candidates depend upon for hype pieces (er, “news coverage”) and, in the case of Gore, for big campaign bucks.
But they are saying it. Particularly Al Gore’s pal, and Tipper Gore’s sometime aide in crusades against musical free speech, Veep candidate Joe Lieberman.
The Lieb’s basic stump speech invokes two main themes:
Lieberman and Gore have avoided, as far as I can tell, bashing NEA-supported art shows or college English classes. The Bush campaign, eager to put the GOP’s legacy of past priggishness behind it, has also been relatively muted in this regard–thus far. But the prigs still have a degree of power in the GOP trenches, and I predict it won’t be long before Bush starts trying to appeal to them.
So should we worry about these comparatively mild, but bipartisan, rants?
Yes.
If these rants become enforced public policy in the next administration, you probably won’t see direct government attempts to fully ban anything (except strip clubs).
You’re more likely to see, both within the next administration and from private groups operating under the next administration’s endorsement, targeted actions against specific “offensive” entertainments:
- Public outcries against raunchy songs (which, if past outcries are any prediction, will come mostly against black artists and/or indie labels);
- Calls for more restrictive and more consistent movie ratings;
- Further restrictions against indie and foreign films that attempt to get released uncut or unrated;
- Mandatory “V-chips,” “family hour” restrictions, and pressures on advertisers against raunchy TV shows (especially raunchy TV shows airing on channels not owned by Viacom, Time Warner, or Rupert Murdoch); and
- Mandatory (or at least really heavily encouraged) Internet “content rating systems,” censorware filters on all school and library computers, and other measures to make sure you’re unable to read nothing online that has as much sex and violence as, say, the Old Testament.
- Zoning and other pressures against outlets offering XXX videos (which, coincidentally, entirely involves video stores other than Blockbuster) and parental-warning-stickered CDs (i.e., stores smaller than Wal-Mart).
As usual, you needn’t fret for the big campaign-contributing media giants that have made zillions on raunch in commercial entertainment.
As we’ve seen with the conglomerates’ Napster-bashing, freedom and open expression aren’t among their highest priorities.
And as we’ve seen with the Napster phenom, such attempts to prop up the plutocracy of Big Media these days end up getting ever more desperate and blatant. They might not succeed in the long run, but can do a lot of damage in the attempt.
TOMORROW: Further adventures with the Razor scooter.
IN OTHER NEWS: Some 200 gay activists and supporters massed on Capitol Hill this past Saturday evening and Sunday morning, to counter-demonstrate against a series of antigay “rallies” by seven (count ’em!) supporters of a virulently bigoted Kansas preacher. Except at the end of the Saturday protests (when one counter-protester tried to approach one of the bigots, only to get shoved onto a car hood by the cops who were keeping the two camps apart), I’ve never seen so many loud and colorfully-dressed people get so worked up about a handful of inauspicious whitebreads since the last Presidential nominating conventions.
ELSEWHERE:
- Today’s most vigilant defenders of artistic freedom and crusaders against censorship–TV wrestling fans!…
- From would-be Net censors to Presidential candidates, the New Sanctimony isn’t just a threat from the rabid Right anymore….
