The Spin Doctor Will See You Now

An amazing phenomenon of the 1992 presidential campaign has been the ability of Democratic and Republican Party spin doctors to go on television and stonily tailor reality to meet the political needs of their candidates.

You know how it goes:

President Bush ground Bill Clinton and Ross Perot into dust.

Oh, yeah? Well, Clinton wiped the floor with Bush and Perot.

Equally astounding has been the continuing willingness of newscasters to grant air time to these dueling spinners, if only because they believe that conflict--even if meaningless, predictable, repetitious and totally without redeeming value--is good TV.

Just thinking here, but have you ever wondered how these professional dissemblers would do if they extended their talents to other television-related areas?

* Irish singer Sinead O’Connor whips up a storm by tearing up a photo of the Pope on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” outraging Catholics and others who felt she has abused her freedom of speech.

Spin: Oh, my. Where do these stories get started? Actually, Sinead was merely expressing her anger at the Vatican photographer who was responsible for what she considered to be a very unflattering likeness of His Holiness, a man and religious symbol for whom she has the greatest respect and affection. And notice that afterward she picked up the pieces of the torn photograph, proving she’s no litterer.

* Al Campanis is ousted as Los Angeles Dodgers vice president and widely criticized in 1987 after telling Ted Koppel on ABC’s “Nightline” that African-Americans are great athletes but “may not have some of the necessities” to hold positions in sports management. He also tells Koppel that African-Americans haven’t the “buoyancy” to be good swimmers.

Spin: The issue here is character. Do you trust a man who has given his life to America’s favorite pastime or someone with hair like Ted Koppel? Al’s remarks were misinterpreted. By “necessities,” he meant that because so many African-Americans are economically disadvantaged, they haven’t the wardrobes to be in management. Thus, instead of slandering African-Americans, Al was emphasizing their plight. As for African-Americans not having “buoyancy,” Al was noting that they can’t float as well as Caucasians because they are weighted down by the steel shackles of prejudice. I mean, those shackles are heavy.

* The new Fox comedy “Likely Suspects” again finishes last in the prime-time Nielsen ratings, ranking 87th.

Spin: We place no stock in polls. The important thing is that we’re headed in the right direction. Our 4.4 rating is .3 better than our previous week’s rating. And as usual, the real story was missed by the biased media. Last week, the No. 1 rated show, “Roseanne,” was only 17.2 rating points ahead of us, compared with 19 points the previous week. We’re now only 35 million viewers behind. We’re narrowing the gap.

Thin Skin: Applaud Fox for allowing its new comedy sketch series, “The Ben Stiller Show” and “The Edge,” to parody some of its own shows. Stiller has ridiculed “Cops,” “The Heights” and “Melrose Place,” while “The Edge” has savaged “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

Boo producer Aaron Spelling for having an epic snit over the way “The Edge” mercilessly mocked his popular “Beverly Hills, 90210.” Spelling has vowed to sue the show’s producers unless they publicly repent and promise never again to parody “Beverly Hills, 90210,” whose stars include Spelling’s daughter, Tori.

So far, “The Edge” and Fox haven’t buckled, even though Spelling is the network’s biggest single program supplier and ratings for “The Edge”--an inconsistent series at best--have been minuscule.

The “Beverly Hills, 90210” parodies showcased “The Edge” at its very funniest, lampooning the Spelling show’s moralizing and the hair and homogenous good looks of its teen-idol cast. In one sketch, brother and sister Brandon and Brenda Walsh found each other so attractive that they started necking passionately. Even more devastating was the repeated depiction of Tori Spelling as snottily informing the other characters that she can do anything she wants “because it’s Daddy’s show.”

Hardball? Yes, but within the realm of acceptable satire. And if Fox has so far resisted heavily censoring its infinitely more outrageous “In Living Color” and “Married . . . With Children,” it surely has no justification for dropping a guillotine on “The Edge.”

Delta Burke, portrayed on “The Edge” as an obese, ravenously devouring behemoth, has more cause to complain than Spelling. His attempt to exclude his hottest current show--and his daughter--from lampooning is curious behavior from a man whose many successful TV works have nearly always been the butts of parody.

He could end all of this by producing series that are not so easily ridiculed.

Art vs. Life Following a host of other prime-time series, NBC’s “L.A. Law” weighed in Thursday night on the Los Angeles riots, devoting its season premiere largely to the devastating civil unrest sparked by the Rodney G. King verdict. The timing was perfect, coming a day after the release of a critical report on police response to the disturbances.

“When will we learn?” Leland McKenzie (Richard Dysart) said somewhat ponderously while watching TV coverage of the violence and looting, which, unknown to him, had engulfed two of his law partners, Douglas Brackman Jr. (Alan Rachins) and Stuart Markowitz (Michael Tucker).

Trapped inside a store being looted, Brackman found himself being handcuffed by police and hauled away with other suspects. And poor Markowitz was dragged from his car and savagely beaten a la Reginald Denny, winding up in a hospital with brain damage, calling his wife “mom” in a high voice.

This was not the mother of “L.A. Law” episodes. Credibility was stretched in getting both high-toned attorneys to an area of the city where they could be separately swept up in the violence. Meanwhile, the posh law firm’s African-American political candidate, Jonathan Rollins (Blair Underwood), was unsubtlely shoved toward a personal crisis over his ethnic identity. And a camcorder issue in an unrelated trial became a heavy-handed metaphor for the King case.

Unlike other series that have aired riots-related episodes, however, “L.A. Law” is not hitting and running. Although jumping ahead five months, next week’s installment will extend the riot story line as part of a multi-episode arc dealing with the aftermath.

Flawed or not, it’s nice to see a series that doesn’t suffer amnesia after each episode.