Primetime Propaganda

by Ben Shapiro

  In June 2010, the Alliance announced that it raised $10 million to spend on family-friendly entertainment. “We’re putting our money where our mouths are,” explained Marc Goldstein, chief content officer for the alliance. “We want to support this kind of programming in a tangible manner.” The alliance has done research showing that purchase intent—consumers’ intent to purchase a product—rises 12 percent when consumers see commercials during family-friendly television.

  The industry has already responded, pledging its support to the alliance’s efforts. But as usual, that support comes with a proviso—that liberal values continue to dominate even family-friendly television. “Values alone will not lead people to watch a show,” said Kevin Reilly of Fox. “It has to work creatively.”16 Of course, he’s right. But values help. Entertainment and solid family values aren’t mutually exclusive. And advertisers can ensure that programming that finds the common ground between entertainment and traditional values gets a hearing in the public square. They’ll make money, the industry will make money, and the audience will finally get what it wants: Entertainment that doesn’t scorn their values.

  When it comes to advertising, conservatives can have a disproportionate effect immediately. Right now, conservative advertisers seem to target conservative audiences alone, which makes them an easy target for liberal government actors (just ask the gold industry). Furthermore, many conservative advertisers refuse to use the television medium altogether because they object to the politics of the shows. That’s the wrong strategy. The better strategy—both from a business standpoint and a political standpoint—would be to target the most successful shows and those that are least militant in their politics (very often these coincide), and place advertiser dollars with them. Sure, that means the advertiser may be supporting a show that doesn’t back its agenda 100 percent of the time. But that also means that the advertiser is reaching out to new consumers and that it’s pushing television away from the more extreme shows. While some executives will stick with advertiser failures simply based on principle, this is still a business, and money talks.

  If the industry refuses to abide by advertiser dictates, advertisers can simply produce their own programming, in the fashion of old-style program sponsorships. That’s already happening. Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart coordinated to produce an NBC family movie titled Secrets of the Mountain. They’ve also gotten together to make three more television pictures. “This has been a petri dish to prove out the case we’re making about advertising in the right context,” Ben Simon, director of Wal-Mart’s brand marketing and co-chair of the Alliance for Family Entertainment, explained. “There was a significant boost to our brand equity and purchase intent, and we saw that translate to sales increases.”17

  Advertisers will see greater programming diversity redound to their benefit. All they have to do is demand it.

  THE STORY GOES ON

  Television will continue to flourish, in whatever form it takes, because people need storytelling. “People still fundamentally want storytelling. Storytelling is the most powerful way that we have of conveying the essence of the human experience to one another,” Carlton Cuse told me.18 That sentiment was seconded by Michael Nankin of Chicago Hope and Picket Fences: “I think that sitting in front of a screen and having a story told to you is something that we need and that we’ll continue to need.”19 Don Bellisario, creator of NCIS and JAG, agreed: “It’s still going to be the same basic stories that have to be told. It’s still human beings. It’s still stories of love and hope and sorrow and loss, recovery, moving on. The stories will still have to be about people. It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed since the Greeks, and it won’t change.”20

  They’re right. Storytelling is a deep human need, not a frivolity. It’s how we learn to connect with one another; it’s how we create shared experiences even if we’re total strangers. The need for human connection is why lonely people keep the television on at night for company, and it’s why we spend time at the water cooler asking each other what the hell happened on last night’s Lost. Television is our chief storytelling mechanism. We need it as much as it needs us.

  If television helps us connect with each other, it is a grave disservice to excise one-half of American political philosophy from the medium. That excision means less understanding of one another, less tolerance, less respect for the honest political debate that goes on every day in this country. It means a more vitriolic country where liberals don’t understand conservatives, and conservatives feel victimized by liberals. If television has the capacity to bring us together, it also has the capacity to tear us apart. And for the last few decades, television has done exactly that.

  Television’s quality has never been in dispute; it is only its exclusive political angle that makes it divisive. It is time for television to bring us together again. For too long, the gods have controlled television from on high, telling us what to think, when to think, and how to think. It is time to bring that power down from the mountaintop and give it back to the American people. It’s time for primetime propaganda to become primetime entertainment again.

  Appendix: The Best Conservative Shows in Television History

  Not all shows are liberal. Some are, in fact, conservative—even if they don’t know it. It’s time to give credit where credit is due. Here’s a list of my top dozen conservative series in television history. These are not the most conservative shows in television history—they are the best shows that happen to carry conservative messages. My criteria, in order of importance: (1) portraying traditional American values in a positive light—values points; (2) taking on liberal sacred cows with total abandon—skewering points; (3) creating memorable conservative characters—we’ll call these sympathy points. They had to be good, too (sorry, Hogan’s Heroes). And no reality shows. I’ve tried to span the history of television (if we really did the top twelve conservative shows, the list would skew heavily to the 1950s). Also, I decided no creator could make two shows on the list. As you’ll see, many of the shows here are described in chapters above, and are actually liberal. The fact that the top conservative shows in TV history lean left merely demonstrates the total domination of the television left for the last five decades. You’ll see that many of these shows were also created by outspoken liberals—this is a tribute to those gutsy liberals who didn’t toe the party line.

  Top Twelve Conservative Shows of All Time

  12. Lost (2004–2010): I may be the only person on earth who believes that Lost skews conservative on political matters, but I’ll stick to my guns. First off, I had to put the show on the list because it is, in my humble opinion, the best show in the history of television. More than that, however, Lost had the temerity to avoid leftist political tropes. It spoke early and often about God and religion. (Spoiler alert: The show’s ending posited an afterlife in which we reflect on our earthly existence and come to terms with it.) It presented the notion of evil embodied. It believed deeply in repentance. And it presented several of the best conservative characters in TV history. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) was a drug dealer turned priest who used his “Jesus stick” (a stick marked with scripture) to bring justice to the sinister Others. Sawyer (Josh Holloway) was a Republican who kicked ass and took names (in season-one’s “Outlaws,” Sawyer says he’s never voted Democrat). He toted guns with authority, bought and sold goods like Warren Buffett at a flea market, and mocked communism. He’s pure tough—he rips a bullet out of his shoulder with his bare hands in season two. Locke (the magnificent Terry O’Quinn) is the most mystical character in TV history, a “Man of Faith.” He teaches ten-year-olds how to throw knives. His motto: “Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do.” Damon Lindelof, J. J. Abrams, and Carlton Cuse (sorry, Walker, Texas Ranger fans) are all liberal, but they’re insanely talented and clearly willing to leave their politics out of the script. The show wins big sympathy points for its characters and a few values points for its focus on religion.

&
nbsp; 11. Walker, Texas Ranger (1993–2001): Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas. Period. Plus, the show contained frequent Christian imagery and upheld traditional family values, all while punishing bad guys and upholding law enforcement. Big values points and sympathy points for the ninja cowboy.

  10. South Park (1997–present): This show is really libertarian. It makes fun of conservatives for their social values, but it mocks liberals mercilessly for their social values, their foreign policy beliefs, their economic foolishness. Matt Stone and Trey Parker aren’t conservative or liberal—they are adamant that no one can label them or their show. “I look at it like this,” Parker told the Huffington Post. “I have a cat, I love my cat and it’s like someone coming in and saying, ‘Hey, is that cat a Republican or a Democrat?’ He’s my f---ing cat, leave him alone.”1 Nonetheless, liberals piss them off more than conservatives, and it shows. Team America is vicious in its assault on liberal sacred cows, from Michael Moore to the Screen Actors Guild. South Park is even more brutal. They’ll even take on Muhammad and Comedy Central. (In Hollywood, it’s a fair question whether it’s more dangerous to take on Muhammad or Comedy Central.) My personal favorite is the tenth-season episode “ManBearPig,” in which Al Gore comes to South Park, declaring, “I am here to educate you about the single biggest threat to our planet. You see, there is something out there which threatens our very existence and may be the end to the human race as we know it. I’m talking, of course, about ‘ManBearPig.’ . . . It is a creature which roams the Earth alone. It is half man, half bear, and half pig. Some people say that ManBearPig isn’t real. Well, I’m here to tell you now, ManBearPig is very real, and he most certainly exists—I’m cereal. ManBearPig doesn’t care what you’ve done. ManBearPig just wants to get you. I’m super cereal. But have no fear, because I am here to save you. And someday, when the world is rid of ManBearPig, everyone will say, ‘Thank you Al Gore—you’re super awesome!’ The end.” That speech is super awesome. Huge skewering points overcome the show’s total lack of values points.

  9. Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005): This underappreciated comedy didn’t say anything important about gay marriage, taxes, global warming, abortion, or any other hot-button political issue. That’s what made it so important. In an age when politics infected virtually every comedy on television, Everybody Loves Raymond was the happy exception. It featured a stable heterosexual two-parent home—actually, it featured two stable heterosexual two-parent homes. It wasn’t Father Knows Best; Raymond (Ray Romano) was a weakling bullied by his mother. Deborah (Patricia Heaton) could be a harridan, Marie (Doris Roberts) was an overbearing horror, and Frank (Peter Boyle) could be mean to his wife. But the love between the couples was obvious, the love for their children was even more obvious, and they never devolved into liberal talking points, the hallmark of a show jumping the shark. It is certainly indicative of how far television has come that a well-written, funny show about a traditional family was revolutionary. High on sympathy points, high on tacit values points.

  8. King of the Hill (1997–2009): Who would have thought the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head, the asinine and vulgar MTV show that perfectly captured the nihilism of the Cobain Generation, would be responsible for the most conservative animated show in the history of television? Incredible, but true. Mike Judge, creator of King of the Hill, is rumored to be a conservative, a charge he evades when asked. “I try to not let the show get too political,” he told the entertainment website IGN. “To me, it’s more social than political I guess you’d say, because that’s funnier. I don’t really like political reference humor that much. Although I liked the episode where Hank’s talking to the mailman and he says, ‘Why would anyone want to lick a stamp that has Bill Clinton on it?’ ” The politics of the show comes through in clear and unmitigated fashion, particularly in the person of main character Hank Hill, a local sales manager from Arlen, Texas. Hank is an ardent conservative, a fan of Reagan, as well as JFK; in one episode, he excoriates his kid, Bobby, because Bobby is doing a report on his “favorite president,” Josiah Bartlet of The West Wing. He’s a gun owner and NASCAR fan. Families are generally happy to shop at Mega Lo Mart (a Wal-Mart takeoff ) and drive pickup trucks. The show routinely makes fun of liberal policies, even as it pokes soft fun at conservatism. The show’s not quite at South Park level in terms of skewering points, but it gets a few points for values and a few for sympathy to joust it into eighth place.

  7. The Waltons (1972–1981): Easily the sweetest show ever made. There is no better depiction of family values on television. This show wasn’t as conservative as people think, but it’s still a beautiful illustration of just why the traditional family structure is so necessary. Values points and sympathy points push The Waltons high on the list.

  6. Gunsmoke (1955–1975): This was the archetypal American Western television show, iconic for its quality and its longevity. It was the biggest hit on television for four straight years, and finished in the top ten an incredible thirteen times. John Wayne introduced the first episode. James Arness played Marshal Matt Dillon, the upright sheriff standing up for law and order, unafraid to use a gun to get the black hats. Yes, Arness was a Republican (Lady Bird Johnson was a fan of the show and was disappointed to hear about Arness’s political affiliation). High on values, high on sympathy. High on traditional American grit, toughness, and independence. You can’t beat Westerns for conservatism.

  5. Dragnet (1951–1959, 1967–1970): Dragnet was based on a simple, conservative premise: Cops are good, criminals are bad, and crime must be punished. Los Angeles Detective Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) was the hard-nosed and efficient policeman tracking down the bad guys. The show never got its due for its realistic portrayals of crime and detective work. Every show ended with the perpetrator caught and sentenced. The remake of the show from 1967–1970 was decidedly conservative as well, standing up against the hippie idiocy of the period. In one special episode, “The Big High,” Friday tracks down two hippie pot smokers, Jean and Paul Shipley, at their home. Friday’s partner notices that the Shipleys’ child, Robin, isn’t in her playpen. They find her floating in the bathtub, drowned. That was Dragnet in a nutshell. The show was a reflection of Webb’s politics—Webb never bought into the notion that social circumstances and poverty caused crime. The show was uncompromising in its principles—aside from 24, it’s the most conservative depiction of law enforcement ever filmed. Extra points for targeting the counterculture.

  4. Leave It to Beaver (1957–1963): There’s a reason this show is seen as the apotheosis of conservative values on television. Ward and June Cleaver are the near-perfect couple, dispensing wisdom and advice to Beaver and Wally. The boys are innocent, the parents love each other and worry about their children, and everyone is basically happy. The real question isn’t why Americans loved this show—the question is why liberals hate this show. The answer: It’s wholesome, clean fun and doesn’t see suburbia as a prison. It doesn’t try to paint the American dream as a nightmare. For the typical Hollywood leftist view of Leave It to Beaver, watch Pleasantville, which tries to infest the 1950s-era ethos with overt and promiscuous sexuality, injecting color into the black-and-white conservative world. The very top on values and sympathy, Leave It to Beaver loses points only because it was one of many conservative shows on television at the time.

  3. Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988): Don Bellisario is responsible for many of the best conservative shows in television history—NCIS and JAG among them. The former Marine’s biggest accomplishment, however, was the depiction of Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck), a private investigator and Vietnam veteran. This was the first depiction of a normal Vietnam veteran in years—television had already turned every vet into a PTSD-suffering Rambo type. Selleck was cool and collected. As Bellisario told me, “When I created Magnum, I made them Vietnam vets, and when I wrote them, I decided I’m going to write them as if they had fought in World War II and came home, not Vietnam. Now they had their Vietnam memories, the
y had their Vietnam flashbacks, they had their delayed stress. But they also were functioning. Functioning normally. And I began to get hundreds and hundreds of letters from Vietnam vets who said, ‘Thank God somebody’s finally portraying us that we’re not all alcoholics, druggies, murderers.’ You know, the country blamed the warriors for the war. Big, big mistake. Big mistake. Never blame the warriors for the war.”2 Bellisario helped rectify that mistake. Big values and sympathy Points for Magnum, P.I., and even bigger points for standing up to the strongest meme in TV military history: the meme of the crazy Vietnam vet.

  2. The Cosby Show (1984–1992): A show about a black middle-class family that doesn’t rip the American government, doesn’t fall into the self-victimization of the “racist society,” doesn’t portray whites as either idiots or bigots, and encourages black children to get an education, get married, and have a family. Revolutionary, even if its creators merely meant it to be a statement on racial tolerance.

  1. 24 (2001–2009): You knew this would be number one. It is, with one caveat: After season four, the show began to die. The first few seasons, the show was pure conservative adrenaline: Bad guys had to be stopped, and if Jack Bauer had to torture terrorists to do it, he would, no questions asked. “We’re running out of time!” was the battle cry—and it was an accurate battle cry. The show embodied the ethic of the War on Terror—we were in a battle for survival, and we didn’t always have time for the Marquis of Queensberry rules. “People in the [Bush] administration love the series,” Surnow noted. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.” Then CAIR got involved. The next thing we knew, Janeane Garofalo was on the show and Jack was suffering pangs of conscience over actions he wouldn’t have blinked at the year before. It was all downhill from there. But for three and a half glorious seasons, 24 took no prisoners, drew immense ratings, and created groundbreaking television with its stylized cutting and real-time storytelling. Fantastic quality, fantastic conservatism. Too bad the liberals killed it.