by Ben Shapiro
Fred Silverman, who ran all three of the networks at one time or another, said television was “certainly not [transformative]—it’s not doing anything.”67 Likewise, Gary David Goldberg, creator of Family Ties and Spin City, stated flatly, “I think it’s reflective.”68 Barbara Fisher, vice president of original programming for Hallmark Channel, lamented television’s lack of transformative power. “I would like to say transformative, but I think more reflective. Because I think everybody’s scared.”69 When I spoke with Marc Cherry, he stated that the transformative era in television began to wane with All in the Family, which he said “had an effect on millions of families in terms of how they perceived issues.” Today, he said, “any progress that is being made . . . in relationship to entertainment is glacial.”70
Leonard Stern of Get Smart, He & She, and McMillan & Wife, also said that television had grown less transformative due to network fear. “At times [television] leads, and very often now it follows,” he averred. “Unfortunately, [the shows] follow each other, so there’s so much [that’s] repetitive. . . . I hold testing and research and demographics in contempt, because I feel they substitute for what used to be instinctual response, visceral go-aheads. And we were a better world for it.”71 A better world according to Leonard Stern and those who think as he does—but there are those who disagreed and who sought to promote a different set of values. And those people, too, buy dish soap. Why shouldn’t the networks count their opinions?
Former HBO executive Michael Brandman agreed with Stern’s view. “I don’t know that there’s anything I can cite nowadays that’s transformational, not in the way Norman Lear’s shows were transformational, or some of the television that was done in the 1980s, early 1990s where the social revolution began to be reflected on television.”72 No doubt Brandman correctly summarizes the gap between television of the Lear era and today’s television—Lear’s shows were far more revolutionary than what we see today. But again, that’s because Lear was fighting something—and Lear won. The 1960s are over. But Hollywood can’t get over it. They’re the former high school football stars reveling in the touchdown of yesteryear while lamenting their beer gut. Today’s Hollywood liberals are in full psychological meltdown because victory brings stagnancy—and Hollywood liberals can’t afford stagnancy, because if the status quo is hunky dory, they’ll have to find another way to justify their affluent lifestyles.
“I think it’s rare that television is a leader in pushing anything forward,” agreed Herman Rush, producer of The Montel Williams Show. “I think it is reflective, and I think it’s reflective because our survival, whether it’s the advertiser, the network, or the creative community is to be successful. And therefore to be reflective of what’s going on in the society is always safer than trying to lead it. So I think few shows try to lead it.”73
Why this emphasis on “leading” the audience and “transforming” society? Because television liberals can’t accept the notion that their business is a business, and that their main job is to sell products so that advertisers will pay them enormous sums of cash. Hollywood’s liberal elites suffer from the Michael Moore Syndrome—love your private jet, but hate the system that bought you that jet.
They therefore try to justify their participation in the economic system they profess to hate by “leading” the public—which nowadays means pushing the envelope on social and lifestyle issues. And pushing the envelope, not coincidentally, raises ratings. Cynically, they congratulate themselves for making Grandma blanch, even if the real purpose of doing so is to draw in mass audiences. If they don’t make Grandma blanch often enough, they think they’re not doing their job.
It’s all transparently exploitative, transparently profitable, and transparently empty. And yet to these Hollywood leftists, the only material that’s admirable is that which shocks the conscience of their audience. Everything else is simple Babbitry, reflective and humdrum.
THE TV LIBERALS’ DISCONNECT WITH REALITY
Liberals think their programming isn’t transformative enough—it’s too “reflective” of the surrounding society. The rest of us laugh at that notion. We laugh because we don’t live the same lives that those in the television industry do. We understand that their shows are transformative of our lives.
But to truly understand the minds of those in Hollywood, we must understand that their shows are reflective to them. In their world, what they put on television is just as real as what you see on the History Channel. That’s because they’re enshrining their own personal histories. “What makes for a great pitch?” asked Brandon Tartikoff in his autobiography. “A connection to real life.”74 Remember the old writing adage, “Write what you know”? In Hollywood, that adage is gospel—and that means that everyone is writing about their particular world, which is almost invariably liberal. And in their view, liberal is “real.”
That’s why Hollywood leftists cannot understand, for the life of them, why anybody would attack their programming choices. After all, they argue, Americans don’t attack the Associated Press’s reporting. Why should they attack Hollywood when it merely reports what’s happening in the world?
Television creators’ insistence on reality goes even deeper than mere reflection of the goings on in the 90210 zip code. When Hollywood liberals talk about reflecting reality, what they really mean is that they make shows that reflect their values. And as we’ve seen, to Hollywood liberals, their values aren’t up for debate—they represent the one true reality. There are plenty of characters and stories and plotlines in television shows, but they almost universally reflect the same set of values—and their creators almost universally praise their concomitant “realism.” Liberal values are truth to the folks who populate the high rises on Wilshire Boulevard. And that fact makes it dangerous for conservatives in town, who disagree with the fundamental “realities” liberals seek to establish and promulgate.
That’s why Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, justifies transitioning ABC Family from a family-friendly network to a more adult-themed network by stating, with a straight face, “The best way to resonate with your audience is to be authentic. And you’re only authentic if you are holding up a mirror to your audience and saying, ‘I see you.’ ”75 What’s so authentic about high school girls making out with one another in Pretty Little Liars or the beautiful sterility of teenage pregnancy on Secret Life of an American Teenager? Not much, on a broad scale. But leftists in the television industry see those shows as realistic in their values, reflective of a new strain in American morality that accepts teenage sexual exploration, teenage pregnancy, and all other forms of teenage deviance and misbehavior as a fait accompli. They mistakenly believe that this new strain in American morality exists in the audience, when it really exists mainly in their own minds. The problem is that they bring such morality to the public fore, and by doing so, promulgate it.
Similarly, Susan Harris, who hated that television was “reflective” rather than transformative of American society, praised her own show’s focus on realism. “We brought it back to reality,” she explained. “As crazy as Soap got, and we had some farcical scenes, and then the very next scene would be a very realistic one and a very emotional one.”76 The reality in Soap, according to Harris, was Soap’s typically leftist morality of multiculturalism, tolerance, and diversity.
During the shift to urban programming in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “reflecting” reality was the preferred excuse for the networks. What they were doing wasn’t transforming the industry’s depiction of American values—that would have been wrong. No, what they were doing was bringing television down to earth. All of a sudden, television’s top executives seemed to realize that The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres constituted a fantastical nonrealistic universe—and that true reality was to be found instead in gritty big city liberal programming. “I think the feeling was in those that championed it that televisio
n was growing up and that it had to reflect much more the period we were living in,” Fred Silverman told me. “The days of The Beverly Hillbillies were over. It was time to put some shows on the air that were about the real world. And thank God that they prevailed.”77 Again, Silverman never seemed to acknowledge that the values of Green Acres were real to the majority of Americans—they didn’t reflect his reality. To Silverman, the morality of the people in Birmingham, Alabama, no more resembled reality than the values of the aliens in My Favorite Martian.
A few creators acknowledge that television still inherently shapes American culture; a few recognize that television by default changes people’s opinions on crucial issues and critical values. Josh Brand, creator of St. Elsewhere and Northern Exposure, spoke eloquently when asked whether television was reflective or transformative of American society: “It certainly reflects culture and it certainly can transform culture.”78
Robert Guza, head writer of General Hospital, believed the same. “We should reflect what we see going on in the greater society,” he explained. “But at the same time we all have an obligation to try to transform it. You see wrongs, you want to try to transform it.”79
That sort of transformation occurs with regard to politics, as Marcy Carsey, creator of The Cosby Show, Roseanne, That ’70s Show, and many others, illuminated. “I think it’s both [reflective and transformative]. . . . I would guess that something like Ellen DeGeneres with her half-hour comedy and Will & Grace . . . I think that had to be one factor of many that has shifted people’s attitudes toward homosexuality in this country, and it has shifted quite, quite dramatically.”80 Michelle Ganeless of Comedy Central cited exactly the same shows as evidence that television has an effect on American values, then summed up, “I think it’s both reflective and transformative because it can expose people, it reaches so far and wide, it can expose people and break down stereotypes and barriers, but it’s also certainly a reflection of what’s already happening.”81 Ganeless and Carsey are exactly correct—those shows reflected the liberal realities of New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, and they transformed everyone else. Transformative television, Marc Cherry said, “has the effect of making the unfamiliar a little bit more familiar.” Familiarity, in short, breeds acceptance—an idea with which the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), purveyor of the notion of “defining deviancy down,” would surely agree.82
While most liberals believe that their programming reflects reality because it reflects their reality, some liberals are more cynical. Some know that their programming is transformative but cite “realism” as a defense to their proselytizing agenda. David Shore, creator of House, scoffed at such attempts. “I think there’s a knee-jerk reaction from people to some extent to say, ‘It’s just reflective, it’s just reflective, you can’t hold me responsible’ from people within the industry,” he said. “That’s a cop-out because . . . we’re also thrilled by the fact that we’re touching people’s lives.”83
Shore’s assessment is right on the money. Television affects Americans whether we like it or not. And here’s the bottom line: Television reflects those who create it and transforms everybody else. If the creators are liberal—and they are—that liberalism will have an effect on Americans. Television acts as a magnifier for television creators’ liberal life experiences—those experiences now become the basis of a prevalent element in American life. Liberals’ reality becomes our reality. As Barbara Fisher said, “We have a very different perspective. [When it comes to what] we find pioneering or shocking, we find very little that way. Whereas in . . . Knoxville, we call them the villes, [they think differently].”84
The transformative power and influence of television can be wielded for political causes, ideological causes, and moral causes well outside the bounds of mainstream America. And as we’ll see in the coming chapters, television’s creators and executives do just that on a routine basis.
A Spoonful of Sugar
How Television Comedy Trashes Conservatism
The creators and executives who populate Hollywood are almost universally liberal. Creative output tends to reflect the beliefs and experiences of creators. Therefore, you’d expect television’s major shows to be liberal. And they are. Unfortunately, we don’t always notice it.
We don’t notice it because the members of the television clique are immensely talented. They aim to entertain, and they hit their mark. And when we’re being entertained, it’s difficult to separate out the political content from the entertainment. Nobody thinks about the politics of Friends—we just laugh at Joey’s idiocy, Ross’s awkwardness, and Chandler’s spastic flailing.
But the politics are there. And they influence us, the same way that Rachel’s haircut influenced a generation of young women or Fonzie’s leather jacket defined cool.
Traditionally, scripted entertainment has been divided between comedy and tragedy; these are the two lobes of the creative brain. Aristotle (the father of Western literary criticism) believed both genres were cathartic—comedy was designed to attack “base” or “ignoble” characters, while tragedy was designed to elevate superior characters.
Obviously, the form of comedy is well-geared toward political ends. Comedy has always been a useful vehicle for attacking customs and manners, and exposing hypocrisy for its own sake, both of which are thrusts aimed directly at the heart of the prevailing authority structure. Comedy asks a continuous stream of questions about the status quo. Such questioning is unique to Western civilization, and in a way forms the basis of democracy—Socrates’ incessant questioning of tradition, the philosophical basis for open political debate, is the most serious form of comedy.
A unique problem arises, however, when there is no authority left to attack. True comedy only satisfies because in the end, the authority structure is generally validated (when it isn’t validated, that’s drama). That’s why comedies of errors typically end with a wedding—after spending three hours watching Benedick and Beatrice mock marriage, they end up under the canopy, reinforcing the status quo. To take a more earthy example: my mom always used to laugh hysterically when my dad would clock his head on a kitchen cabinet. “I knew you weren’t really hurt,” she’d laugh. Now that I’m married, my wife does the same thing, with exactly the same justification. That’s because physical pratfalls are only hilarious when we know that the victim isn’t really injured.
The same is true of authority. When the authority remains generally unharmed, there is no problem—we can mock it and chastise it and laugh at it. But what happens when the authority structure abandons the stage altogether? Now comic irony has no stable target and descends into nihilism, attacking everything left standing with equal fervor. This is where we are today.
But while modern comedy has become more and more nihilistic, it remains a dominant mode on television. As Mike Dann, former CBS executive, said, “Comedy is king. There never was a time in the history of radio, and most of television—in series—that the top shows were not comedies.”1 And comedy is uniquely qualified to convince us of certain ideas. That’s because humor disarms us. Laughter is infectious. We don’t care when we watch The Simpsons that Homer Simpson abuses his children; we don’t care when we watch Family Guy that Stewie is an incipient serial killer. They’re funny. We laugh at them. And that makes us more inclined to accept their liberal and/or nihilistic perspectives on the world.
Sometimes that’s a great thing—when we laugh at Archie Bunker’s racism, for example, we’re really saying that we reject his racism. But laughter can also be politically pernicious—after all, people used to laugh at racist blackface routines. Laughter is a weapon to be wielded, not an ultimate good.
And our comedy writers know this full well, which is why they marshal the power of laughter to their political causes. The writers and executives know that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
Here, then, is a survey of some of the most popular comedies of
all time—and what they were really about. This analysis is not mere speculation. It is based on the background of creators, their stated political goals in creating their shows, and the content of the shows themselves.
You will notice two particular themes that crop up over and over. The first is the steady undermining of traditional notions of fatherhood. Since Aristophanes and Plautus, comedy has always mocked fathers—fathers are familial stand-ins for the social authority structure. But television history also happens to coincide with an outright assault on the traditional family in the name of liberal values. We will see how television—both mirroring and promoting the decay of traditional moral values—traces the transformation of fathers from steady and permanent authority figures to dunderheaded morons.
The second theme is the changing treatment of blue-collar Americans. Television comedy is an excellent gauge for how the liberal movement feels about particular populations, and the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker is a case in point.
When JFK and LBJ occupied the White House, television’s rural and blue-collar characters were hard-working Americans with a strong sense of family and a tendency to do the right thing. When Nixon became president, blue-collar workers suddenly became reactionary monsters like Archie Bunker—revenge by Hollywood against the real-life workers who shied away from George McGovern. That scorn for blue-collar Americans lasted until the rise of Roseanne, which reflected the realization by television liberals that they could woo more flies with honey than with vinegar. Since then, however, blue-collar workers have fallen totally off the radar—most of today’s comic heroes are urban liberals, the type of folks you’d expect to see at an Obama fundraiser in Beverly Hills.
