MISSOURI WATCH: THE DOLING OF AMERICA

Like millions of other Americans, I applauded the recent criticism against segments of America's entertainment industry by the Republican majority leader of the U.S. Senate, our neighbor from the state of Kansas. Like other critics who suddenly go public with social criticism at a defining moment, Sen. Robert Dole was subjected to the usual criticism from an audience that would no doubt label itself "enlightened."

There were suggestions that perhaps the announced presidential candidate in 1996 was suddenly entering the fray because he was seeking support from the more conservative groups within his party. As if this would be the first time a presidential candidate sought to ride a wave of criticism against some suspect segment of American society!

Whether Dole was simply seeking the vote of conservatives or whether he had at last had his fill with some of the awful programming now accepted as normal in our entertainment industry is of little concern to many of us. And whether, in his zeal for public acclaim he has trammeled on the rights of such purveyors of bad taste as the Time Warner Corp. is also, personally speaking, of little importance.

Make no mistake about it, what the senior senator from Kansas said was on the mark: Too much entertainment offered the public today is trash, cultural crap that detracts from American society and inhibits the intellectual and moral growth of every age of our population.

Despite what critics later contended, Dole did not call for governmental censorship, nor did he suggest that he was about to offer a bill in Congress to restrict the right of free speech. One would gather from some of the outcries that the Kansas Republican favored repeal of the First Amendment, although some of the movies I've seen in the past few years, many of the blatantly scatological one-liners on television programs and numerous suggestive song lyrics that ooze from my radio come very close to resembling the cry of "Fire!" in America's cultural theaters.

At the very least, this kind of entertainment, filled not only with sexually suggestive phrases but blatantly explicit language, is intellectual garbage that permeates every household in the country. Rap songs that seek some kind of ghoulish retribution against law enforcement officials or members of other races and religions have no social relevance and absolutely no intrinsic moral value.

"Turn off your TV or radio," Dole's critics demand as a solution to the problem. But regulating what society watches and hears is not easily accomplished, unless one is pursuing a monastic existence in which all temporal events are prohibited. Why should a small number of profit-oriented corporations, in allegiance with a somewhat larger number of entertainers unable to make reasonable judgments of taste and culture, be permitted to program what the rest of the country sees on television, hears on radio and views at movie theaters?

Most of us know broadcast and telecast licenses are the property of the American people and not a small group of companies that adopt as their first obligation a profit for stockholders. If there is any obligation to the viewing public, we are seldom able to witness it since there are so few programs that are both entertaining and informative. Hollywood is not in the business of creating enlightenment, but only in the creation of the sensational, the violent and the sordid. Appealing to the lowest common denominator, we have movies that portray illicit sex and graphic violence as if they were the societal values of a majority of Americans. Despite high crime rates and evidence of a sexually permissive society, we know these are not the moral benchmarks in an age that still favors good over evil, morality over debauchery, truth over duplicity.

Let's not deceive ourselves, the absence of morality on movie screens in favor of the sensational, sexual and sadistic is exploitive and designed to sell tickets to the curious, the uninformed and the morally bankrupt. Movies more often reflect the lives of those who make them than view them, but, unfortunately, fascination with the illicit generates profits.

Like Dole, I have no desire to restrict the rights of legitimate companies, producers, broadcasters and entertainers who have a vision beyond mere titillation and wish to appeal to the best that's in society, not the basest. If other segments in society will demand something better, as one U.S. senator has done, perhaps the volume against trash, poor taste and excess can be raised. It's our country, and society deserves at least an equal voice in deciding how its values are portrayed as well as how they are retailed. Bob Dole has a valid objection.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.