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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 44

CANDICE BERGEN

Sitcom Politics


As Murphy Brown prepares to zap Dan Quayle, TV draws fire for
its `liberal bias.' Do the charges have merit?

By RICHARD ZOGLIN - With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Martha
Smilgis/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York


    Making wisecracks about Vice Presidents is a venerable
tradition on TV. But the gang-stomping of Dan Quayle at the Emmy
Awards ceremony two weeks ago resembled a Rodney King beating
by the Hollywood elite. Quayle, TV's favored whipping boy ever
since he made Murphy Brown a campaign issue last May, was the
butt of what seemed like every third joke onstage. Comedian
Richard Lewis said he would "run away" if Quayle ever became
President; Robin Williams, in a clip from the Tonight show,
described Quayle as being "one taco short of a combination
plate." Candice Bergen, accepting her Emmy for Murphy Brown,
sarcastically thanked the Vice President. And Diane English,
Murphy's creator, capped the evening with a defense of single
mothers that crossed the line into partisan meanness. "As Murphy
herself said, `I couldn't possibly do a worse job raising my kid
alone than the Reagans did with theirs.' "

    The audience laughed and applauded many of these lines.
But the morning-after reaction was more troubled. At a campaign
rally the next day, Quayle used the Emmy barrage to pound home
his point that "Hollywood doesn't like our values." Many in the
TV industry agreed that the whole display was, at the very
least, poor public relations. "The Emmys fed into the myth that
Hollywood is self-absorbed and self-indulgent," said producer
Dick Wolf. "They gave Bush and Quayle another 3 million votes."
Even Bergen found the 3 1/2-hour political diatribe in her
honor a bit overboard. "It was a free-for-all, a disservice to
TV," she said. "The Emmys didn't help Hollywood's profile."

    Suddenly, that profile is a hot political issue. Quayle's
attack on Murphy Brown (glamourizing her decision to have a baby
alone, he charged, was symptomatic of Hollywood's scorn for
traditional family values) has been the most widely quoted
speech of the presidential campaign. Not far behind it is
President Bush's swipe at another popular TV show: "We need a
nation closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons."

    These attacks have dovetailed with mounting criticism from
less partisan observers. In a new book, Hollywood vs. America,
critic Michael Medved argues that current movies and TV shows
systematically disparage such values as patriotism, religious
faith and marital fidelity. "Tens of millions of Americans now
see the entertainment industry as an all-powerful enemy, an
alien force that assaults our most cherished values and corrupts
our children," he writes. "The dream factory has become the
poison factory."

    It's a strange sight. Conservative critics charge that the
nation's most popular entertainment medium is out of step with
the American people. Republican politicians think they can rack
up political points by attacking shows that are watched and
loved by millions. A Hollywood community that produced the most
conservative President of the century has, it is alleged, come
under almost total domination by a clique of liberals. Is it all
just political posturing? Or has television really crossed the
line from entertainment into advocacy? Are the people who create
TV shows too insulated from mainstream America, too liberal for
prime time, too smug for their own good?

    One thing, at least, is inarguable: entertainment TV is
thrusting itself, and being thrust, into the political arena as
never before. Murphy Brown's season premiere, a surefire ratings
blockbuster, will be a special hour-long episode in which Murphy
responds to the Vice President. While harriedly tending to her
new baby, she hears his remarks on TV and reacts with
incredulity: "I'm glamourizing single motherhood? What planet
is he on? I agonized over that decision." Later, she appears on
her TV show to answer Quayle's charges: "Perhaps it's time for
the Vice President to expand his definition and recognize that
whether by choice or circumstance families come in all shapes
and sizes. And ultimately, what really defines a family is
commitment, caring and love."

    TV's rebuttal to Quayle will not end there. An upcoming
episode of Hearts Afire, a new sitcom set in Washington,
features a scene in which a dull-witted conservative Senator
(George Gaynes) sees Murphy Brown on TV for the first time. What
has Dan Quayle got against that "good-looking woman?" he asks
his chief aide (John Ritter). "Well, Senator, she had a baby out
of wedlock," the aide says. "But she's not real, is she?"
replies the Senator, echoing the snide chorus of derision that
greeted Quayle's attack on "a fictional character."

    TV is venturing into the political fray on other topics as
well. The Simpsons chose the night of Bush's acceptance speech
at the Republican Convention to make their reply to the
President's gibe. "Hey, we're just like the Waltons," said Bart.
"Both families spend a lot of time praying for the end of the
Depression." The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were the
subject of pointed comments on Designing Women last season. "The
man does not belong on the Supreme Court," said one character.
"He belongs in the national repertory theater." Even frivolous
shows like Freshman Dorm, a CBS summer entry, reveal TV's
heightened political consciousness. "Be careful what you wish
for," said a black student. "I wanted a black Supreme Court
Justice, and I got Clarence Thomas."

    Prime time will draw even more heavily on the headlines
this fall. The recession will be Topic A on Roseanne, as Dan
Conner loses his job and the family must scramble to pay its
bills. The Los Angeles riots will be the backdrop for episodes
of several series, including A Different World and Doogie
Howser, M.D. In Doogie's season opener, for example, the
hospital staff spends a frantic shift caring for riot victims.
Though the show takes no political stand on the riot or its
causes, Doogie expresses his sympathetic sentiments at the end
by paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr. in his computer diary:
"A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard."

    Such topicality, of course, is not new for entertainment
TV. More than 20 years ago, Norman Lear's All in the Family
introduced the notion that situation comedies could provide
social commentary while getting laughs. TV movies and drama
shows like L.A. Law tackle virtually every headline-making issue
that comes down the pike, from date rape to capital punishment.
Nor has left-leaning political satire been unknown on network
TV: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s and
Saturday Night Live starting in the mid-'70s took on
Establishment targets with irreverent glee.

    But never have prime-time entertainment shows been so bold
about commenting on current affairs -- or their creators been
so willing to step outside their characters to engage in
political debate. "I had no animosity toward Quayle," says
Bergen, "but then this glint of a zealot appeared. With the
recent poverty figures that have been released, and the highest
levels of unemployment since 1984, making ((Murphy's
motherhood)) a campaign issue is insane." Producer Diane English
-- who even challenged Quayle to debate the issue, to no avail
-- draws a rather far-fetched parallel between the
Administration's campaign against TV and the '50s blacklist: "I
really feel like I'm entering a new era of McCarthyism, where
one day somebody is going to come up to me and say, `Are you now
or have you ever been involved in the television business?' "

    The current wave of TV bashing is different from the
attacks on excessive sex and violence launched in the past by
conservative watchdogs such as the Rev. Donald Wildmon. Nor does
it have much to do with recent right-wing charges that PBS
programming -- mainly a few independently produced documentaries
-- has a liberal slant. It goes straight to the hearts and
mind-sets of the people who create the shows that most of
America watches. In essence, it is an extension of an argument
made by Ben Stein, a TV scriptwriter and former Nixon
speechwriter, in his 1979 book, The View from Sunset Boulevard.
Stein contended that, on subjects ranging from religion to the
military, TV reflects the values of a pampered, predominantly
liberal Hollywood elite.

    It is hard to dispute the contention that TV's creative
community, on the whole, has a liberal bent. Democratic
activists are easy to find in Hollywood; Republicans (with a few
exceptions, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston and
Major Dad's Gerald McRaney) tend to lie low. "There used to be
a rule in Hollywood that you didn't mix your politics with your
image," says one producer. "This wall came tumbling down for
liberals but not conservatives. The conservative talents don't
flaunt their politics."

    A survey of 104 top TV creators and executives, conducted
by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a Washington
watchdog group, found that the views of this TV "elite" are
considerably more liberal than those of most Americans. For
example, 97% of the respondents held a pro-choice view on
abortion, 86% supported the right of homosexuals to teach in
public schools, and 51% do not regard adultery as wrong. "People
in Hollywood are overwhelmingly left of center," says S. Robert
Lichter, co-director of the center, "so it makes sense that they
do material that is congruent with their point of view. So you
get material on environmentalism, feminism, gay rights. You
won't see old-fashioned patriotism, stories on religion, support
for the military."

    It is not at all certain, however, that liberal views
translate into advocacy programming. Most producers insist that
they avoid political commentary and strive for balance in
presenting controversial issues. "We're here to entertain
people, not become social activists," says Dick Wolf, executive
producer of Law & Order. Steven Bochco, co-creator of L.A. Law
and Doogie Howser, M.D., says, "Philosophically, I've been
opposed to using my shows as political forum."

    Diane English too insists her goal is to entertain, not
sway voters. But she concedes she made the character of Murphy
Brown "a liberal Democrat because in fact that's what I am." She
sees TV's political role in somewhat grandiose, Madisonian
terms. "The people in power, whether Democrats or Republicans,
all have access to the airwaves. The opposing point of view is
often not heard, and in this case, with 12 years of Republicans
who are followed around by the press, with every word and every
speech documented, perhaps Hollywood's liberal bent is kind of
a natural balance to that."

    The closest thing TV has to an advocacy producer is Linda
Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of three current network shows:
Designing Women, Evening Shade and the upcoming Hearts Afire.
She and her husband Harry Thomason are Clinton friends and
supporters (and part-time residents of Little Rock) who produced
the biographical film that introduced the candidate at the
Democratic Convention. "So-called serious newspeople miss the
powerful potential of the entertainment forum as a means of
influencing people's lives in a positive way," she says. "I have
my own column on TV, and I take it as seriously as does Mike
Royko or David Broder." Yet Bloodworth-Thomason denies that the
TV community is a liberal monolith. "Entertainment corporations
are owned by old, white, conservative, rich men," she says. "The
artists they employ are more liberal. The slant of what the
artists are allowed to put out will be determined by the profit
factor. The bottom line is money."

    Indeed, the structure of network television serves to keep
entertainment from wandering too far from the safe political
center. Advertisers, for example, shy away from any program that
takes a controversial political stand or gets too explicit about
sensitive subjects like homosexuality. No leading character in
a prime-time TV series since Maude has had an abortion, mainly
because of advertiser skittishness. "There's no issue today more
contentious," says Joel Segal, executive vice president at
McCann-Erickson/New York. "Nobody is interested in alienating
large blocs of viewers."

    Network executives, not surprisingly, have the same
concerns. Censors monitor shows closely for any material that
might be objectionable to a large (or at least vocal) segment
of the audience. "It's the responsibility of good television to
be topical, but it should not espouse any political candidacy,"
says CBS Entertainment president Jeff Sagansky. Still, success
in the ratings (Murphy Brown commands the highest ad rates of
any series on TV) can go a long way toward calming network
nerves. "The viewers vote for Murphy Brown every week," says
Sagansky, "and only vote for Dan Quayle every four years."

    So does network TV reflect a liberal sensibility? Yes, a
certain political correctness does prevail around the dial. The
concerns of feminists, environmental activists and oppressed
minorities are given sympathetic treatment; big corporations are
usually portrayed as villains; government bureaucrats are
typically inept or uncaring. But this is probably due less to
political calculation than to dramatic necessity. Artists tend
to gravitate toward humanistic concerns rather than
institutional ones; pitting an underdog against the system
always makes for a better story. This is not necessarily proof
of liberal bias any more than the proliferation of TV
shoot-'em-ups means that Hollywood producers support the N.R.A.

    The irony is that one area where TV espouses unmistakably
conservative values is the very one that Quayle chose to focus
on: the family. Though single-parent households are common on
TV (as they are in real life), the family bond is nearly always
portrayed as strong and indispensable. If TV has any prevailing
sin, it is its sunny romanticizing of that bond: no matter what
the conflicts or crises, family love makes everything come out
all right. If Dan Quayle were to look at TV a little more
closely, he might find the stuff of Republican dreams.