As the clock ticks out on the mid-term elections, the tube is rife with nonstop political ads, TV talk shows discussing the up-coming elections, late-night comedians joking about the elections, impromptu press conferences by the President and Secretary of Defense, and series like Law & Order, Boston Legal and The Simpsons that have saved their most dramatic and satiric commentary on the State of the Union for this week's airing. So it's all elections, all the time, which, in a democracy, a week before one of the most important elections in recent years, is how it should be.
Nightline did its part, devoting its October 27 newscast to the Dixie Chicks and the new documentary about them, Shut Up and Sing, and its October 30 episode to the attack by American soldiers on unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a scandal that is currently under investigation by the Pentagon, in which several soldiers have been charged in the grisly wartime murders.
Both pieces put the Bush Administration's war policy (whatever it is this week) front and center. The Dixie Chicks, the best-selling girl band in the history of American music, went through an auto da fe a few years ago when their lead singer stated impromptu at a concert that she was ashamed that Bush came from Texas.
The group was promptly pilloried. Their CDs were burned, country stations refused to play them, while more left-leaning stations that had never played them did so. Their sales fell off dramatically. The always non-ideological group known for singing about love gone wrong and other country music staples had become politicized by free speech.
The group still opposes the war, still thinks Bush is a "dumb [bleep]," as one member said in their dressing room after the President commented on their comments, but the nation has come around to their way of thinking. There are still protests at their concerts, but they have slowly regained the support of their audience.
As for the Haditha massacre, that horror was laid out in graphic, CSI-style revolting detail by Nightline. Expect to see more on this dark side of the war in the coming days as the election draws closer. What's clear to the media and the nation, if not to the Bush Administration, is, "It's the war, stupid."
The right is still trying to deflect attention away from the war by focusing on ideologies, of course. Rush Limbaugh created a furor with his attacks on Michael J. Fox last week. Fox has been doing political ads for candidates who support stem cell research. Limbaugh accused Fox of exaggerating the symptoms of his advanced Parkinson's disease, for which he has had several brain surgeries and takes myriad medications.
Most news outlets and tabloid TV shows voiced outrage over the Limbaugh assault. Fox is a uniformly respected actor, and has shown little overt partisanship politically. He supports stem cell research and those who promote it, who are almost wholly Democrats. But Fox campaigned for Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA] two years ago, because Specter, who suffers from cancer, has been a longtime supporter of stem cell research. Fox responded to the Limbaugh attack in a sit-down interview with Katie Couric.
Those who watch the always stupendous Boston Legal know Fox has a recurring role on the show. His symptoms are not controlled; he has learned, however, to work within their jarring manifestations.
It's always difficult to pinpoint the most repugnant aspect of Limbaugh, but his accusation that Fox was "acting" (for which he never apologized, despite misrepresentations in the media that he did) or "off his medication" was most repellant because Fox does have a terminal illness that is hugely debilitating. He's had it since his early 30s. Why shouldn't viewers see the impact of such a disease on a human being? Doesn't that help create an informed decision?
Bill crap
Informed decisions aren't the purview of the right, however, as the lead-in to the election has made quite clear. Although Limbaugh is the true heart and soul of the mean-spirited right, Bill O'Reilly is the guy they dress up (he cleans up so much better, and his lies are more in keeping with the Bush Administration's party line) and put out on the public stage.
On October 27, Oprah did another of her town hall discussions, this time with O'Reilly. Two weeks earlier, she had New York Times columnist (and avowed liberal) Frank Rich on the show discussing his new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, about the decline of truth in American politics and media.
Like Rich, O'Reilly was touting his latest book, Culture Warrior, and like Rich, O'Reilly was giving his side of the ideological divide. Unlike Rich, however, O'Reilly was surly, dismissive of any opinion in disputation with his own, and generally rude, which is his trademark behavior on the tube.
There was less yelling than usual. O'Reilly comes from the Chris Matthews school of shouting his opposition into silence, but in deference to Oprah, whom he claimed as being on his side of the ideological fence, he was almost calm.
In her town meeting with Rich, Oprah had challenged the columnist on various points, specifically on whether Bush was a liar. That didn't happen in her discourse with O'Reilly. Before she opened the discussion up to audience questions, Oprah did ask O'Reilly about his black-and-white assessment of the American demographic, which he separates into traditionalists and secular-progressives, and queried whether such constructions just further divide the nation along ideological lines.
O'Reilly said people have to take sides. As his markers, the host of cable's top-rated show The O'Reilly Factor defined rap music and parental consent laws for abortions for minors as his litmus for the decline and fall of American civilization. He told the audience (which was not the average Oprah audience at all, stocked with right-wing lovers of O'Reilly; there were only a handful of dissenters, and those were quickly quelled by O'Reilly) they had a choice: they could keep America as it is, the world's most powerful and valued nation, or they could have "Holland" or Denmark instead, countries that O'Reilly views as emblematic of liberal extremism. O'Reilly talked about the most dangerous group in America: the ACLU. He uses their support of NAMBLA and Guantanamo detainees as his rationale for that, which sparked a one-sided debate on moral relativism.
O'Reilly also repeated many of the stock lies of the right/Bush Administration, like the link between 9/11 and Iraq. He stated unequivocally that there was indeed a phalanx of al-Qaeda in Iraq that helped plan the 9/11 attacks. Just a reminder, since O'Reilly wasn't corrected by anyone: This is a lie.
The importance, so close to the election, of the O'Reilly town meeting on the show (which re-airs on late night in most markets) of the most powerful and influential woman in America cannot be minimized. Oprah's other shows last week included an interview with Magic Johnson on his series of clinics to fight AIDS in urban America, and a dialogue with seven women with HIV/AIDS discussing how the epidemic continues to rage. She also interviewed Madonna about her adoption of a one-year-old boy from Malawi.
O'Reilly is right: there is indeed a culture war in America, and TV is where we see it played out with daily clarity. Issues that matter to the American people — polls put the top three as the war, the economy and health care — are never discussed by the right. They avoid the war (in his most recent press conference last week, a desperate Bush asserted that things needed to change in Iraq), tout the economy as healthy (even though 52 million Americans are living at or below the poverty level) and ignore health care altogether (42 million Americans have no health care, and another 30 million are underinsured; the US is the only Western nation that does not insure all its citizens with health care).
In the weeks leading up to the elections, what we have seen most is the spate of lies coming from the right about who the moderate left-of-center (because there is no real "left" in the country anymore) is.
Ad hockey
The O'Reilly town meeting told part of the tale, the political ads tell more. In Pennsylvania, for example, where one of the tightest and most important Senate races is playing out, the ads from the right have been brutal.
Rick Santorum is the third most powerful Republican in Congress. He is also perhaps the most right-wing member of the Senate, the one who equated same-sex marriage with man-dog sex, and who wants to outlaw all birth control because he says the US Supreme Court overstepped in its 1965 ruling on Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control.
Santorum is in a tightly contested race in Pennsylvania to retain the seat he has held for three terms. Running against him is Bob Casey, Jr., son of the late Pennsylvania governor, Bob Casey, Sr. who was a figurehead in the national Democratic Party, known best for his opposition to abortion and the death penalty. Casey Jr. has strong support in the middle and western parts of the state, and he has been leading Santorum in the polls by about five points.
In Casey's ads, he depicts Santorum as an extremist, which he is. He notes Santorum's 98% voting record with Bush, his refusal to raise the minimum wage while giving tax cuts to the rich, and his support of the war in Iraq. He also notes Santorum's repeated references to abolishing birth control. Like his father, Casey opposes abortion and the death penalty, but he supports queer civil rights, birth control and stem cell research, all of which Santorum opposes, although Santorum does support the death penalty. The ads are tough but honest.
In Santorum's ads, he depicts Casey as a "dangerous liberal," focusing on Casey's support of amnesty for illegal immigrants. In his most recent ads, Santorum has juxtaposed Casey's face with that of North Korea's Kim Jong Il, with missiles in the center. The voiceover notes that Casey is against a missile defense system for the US (none has been proven to work, yet) and that he "welcomes illegal immigrants" into the US, despite the threats of terrorism to the nation. Thus Santorum equates illegal immigrants, more than 95% of whom come from Latin America, with terrorism.
This particular ad campaign, the argument that Democrats are soft on terrorism, is being repeated in New Jersey and New York, where tough Senate races divide centrist Democrats from extremist Republicans. The focus is consistent: Democrats will tax the hell out of you (because they are all for rolling back Bush's tax cuts for the rich) and make the nation unsafe (because they are for immigration reforms).
On Oprah, O'Reilly said he thought the Democrats would take the House or the Senate, he didn't think both. He didn't give a reason why, but did imply that it was somehow the fault of a populace that doesn't get the importance of not turning America into "Holland." Somehow, in his diatribe on moral values, the name "Mark Foley" never came up, even though NAMBLA was discussed in detail.
O'Reilly appeared on David Letterman's show a few hours after his appearance on Oprah. Unlike the daytime diva, who has a different demographic to address, Letterman took the gloves off. O'Reilly arrived holding a Halloween sword and shield. He handed the sword to Letterman and took up the shield. He needed it.
O'Reilly was pilloried on his last visit to Letterman, in which the comedian asserted that "about 60% of what you say is crap." This time, he tried to put Letterman on the defensive. He asked, "Do you want America to win or not in Iraq?" When Letterman paused, O'Reilly said, "It's an easy answer." To which Letterman replied, "No it's not, because I'm thoughtful."
The debate between Letterman and O'Reilly focused predominantly on the war. Unlike Oprah, who had read O'Reilly's book and made specific comments about it, Letterman said he hadn't read it and didn't plan to. When discussing O'Reilly's talk show, Letterman quipped, "I go over to Fox, and all I can find are The Simpsons. Are you sure you have a show?"
As they debated the war, O'Reilly repeated more of the cant from his appearance on Oprah, this time asserting that Iraqi terrorists had been caught poisoning the British water supply with ricin, an alleged plot that was thoroughly debunked, but which O'Reilly repeated as fact. He also used ABC's Brian Ross as his source for many of his claims, none of which could be substantiated on the ABC News website. He dismissed the torture of water-boarding and getting terrorists a little wet. O'Reilly acknowledged that the war on Iraq had been a mistake, but covered Bush with "mistakes happen."
Letterman countered with: "So we made a mistake with the war, so we just stay and kill as many Americans as we possibly can? That's how we fix a mistake? How do you make a right decision out of a wrong decision?"
Letterman was self-deprecating as usual, and said he didn't know enough to argue the facts with O'Reilly, but added that he didn't think O'Reilly had the facts, either. At one point in the riposte, Letterman charged, "You are putting words in my mouth, just like you put artificial facts in your head."
TV has been the proving ground for the culture wars, and will continue to be so. The Oct. 27 episode of Law & Order ran a storyline in which a huge government contractor like Halliburton provided faulty body armor for soldiers in Iraq, and the Pentagon asked that it be covered up. The Republican DA (played by real-life former Republican congressman Fred Thompson) agreed to do so.
The fog of war is all around us. TV has been both the debunker of myths and the propagator of them. In the days before the elections, the swirl of controversies large and small will continue to be previewed on the small screen. There's little counter to the Limbaughs and the O'Reillys. Even Oprah, who took on Katrina and AIDS in Africa, won't take them on. That leaves the voters and the polls on November 7.
Stay tuned.