Doling Out Views on TV Violence

W ill this mail mania never stop? The nerve! Initial letters concern a column questioning the motives of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s blast at the entertainment industry:

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I cannot understand why something that seems simple to me is so wrong to people like you. Namely the connection between the way people behave in real life and TV.

The TV industry takes billions of dollars every year from large corporations. They do this by claiming that repetitive ads will actually affect people’s actions. Yet they act as if the young lady (who believes that a certain deodorant or hair spray is the key to a new and exciting life) or the young man (who believes that certain brands of beer will ensure social happiness) turn off their brains the minute the ads stop.

Do you really believe that no one is affected by the actions they see day after day on their screens? The same screens that tell them how to be beautiful, handsome and/or loved? Do their brains just go into hibernation between ads?

I do not believe that TV and/or Hollywood is the cause of every ill of mankind. But to claim it has no effect at all and that critics are moved solely by opinion polls is cheap, stupid and wrong. You are anxious to pound Limbaugh and his ilk. Did it ever occur to you, for just a teeny minute, that virtually all the printed media are liberal and that the only outlets the conservatives have is talk radio? Maybe if conservatives and religious people felt their values were correctly shown on the TV or movie screens and in the newspapers they would not be so eager to embrace the talk-show hosts you love to insult. Until that day, I think you demean yourself with your gratuitous insults of Dole and others. It does not make them smaller. It exposes a terrible bias in you.

JOHN KANE

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Regardless of what you may think of Dole, and I won’t be voting for him, why disregard the message because you don’t like the messenger?

LOUIS H. NEVELL

Los Angeles

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I agree with Bob Dole . . . a frightening thought. Much is causing the decline in morals and responsibility: broken homes, mothers choosing or forced to work, fathers who have vanished from the scene, poverty, etc. But surely the lyrics to rap songs, the Schwarzenegger movies and coming attractions on TV for programs of violence are factors, too.

BERMADONE HARRIS

Los Angeles

About a column concerning an anti-violence-in-media kit offered by the Center for Media Literacy:

All the ballyhoo of the “Beyond Blame” video-based lesson plans, etc., can’t and won’t do as much as a national broad-based public boycott of advertisers. Haven’t you heard? Just threaten the pocketbooks of the well-heeled companies that pay for TV violence and all hell will break loose. That kind of violence I could go for.

SHIRLEY WOLF

Santa Monica

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I read your column promoting yet another group concerned with so-called “media violence.” I can’t claim to be a watcher of network shows, but I’ve never seen or heard of any Kurosawa, Tarantino or Peckinpah type of violence on any of the networks; or maybe these professional hand-wringers want to censor--oh, excuse me, re-edit--”Prime Suspect” or Bravo’s rerun of “The Seven Samurai,” or maybe we should just stop showing “violent trash” like Roman Polanski’s “Macbeth.”

Are these people at all concerned with the inane violence of the 10 o’clock news, the sheer enraging stupidity of the O.J. trial, the vulgar brainlessness of “Martin,” boxing, bull riders, NFL football, hockey or “Married . . . With Children”? As Beavis & Butt-head once said, “I feel sorry for my TV having to show all this crap.”

These hand-wringing elitists don’t care about media’s effect on society, they’re just another band of sniveling social fascists who want to carve out a cushy sinecure for themselves so they can pontificate at leisure and be taken seriously by media critics. TV promotes vulgarity, stupidity and open-mouth breathing, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

PHIL CUMMINGS

Woodland Hills

About a column noting TV’s wooing of viewers 18 to 49:

We are 70 and just recently retired, but believe me, we keep the economy going with our spending power, and buy the advertised products. We have sons, 43, 41 and 38 who enjoy the same shows we do, plus their children watch “Murder, She Wrote” every Sunday with their parents.

VIOLA M. DEVINE

Garden Grove

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It’s odd that the advertisers fail to realize that our generation is the one with $$$ to spend. We have no dependents anymore, our house is paid for, and we’d expect to be targeted. But instead we are completely ignored (except for the telephone solicitors who call at dinner time). As you said, we have been “devalued.”

MILDRED B. SHORE

Fullerton

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This month I will celebrate my 47th birthday. In September my husband will celebrate his 48th. Although we will soon exit the “18 to 49 crowd” you specifically cite, we already are being ignored by television programming gurus. At the beginning of every television season, I update my own viewing schedule that I keep on my computer. And every season the list grows shorter as more favorite shows are canceled, and fewer are added. The difference is, we don’t mind because we don’t rely on television for entertainment anymore.

Yes, we’ve developed other interests . Sometimes we read. (Remember magazines, books and newspapers?) Sometimes we garden. (Remember yards?) Sometimes we entertain. (Remember friends?) Sometimes we even write letters! Sometimes we take a walk or a bicycle ride. (Remember exercise for pleasure?) Sometimes we go to concerts, plays or even movies. (Remember life before television?) Sometimes we work on stamp collections. (Remember hobbies?) Sometimes we attend meetings. (Remember worthwhile organizations and causes?) Sometimes we work on the house we are renovating. And always we talk, because we have something to talk about!

STEVEN A. and CATHERINE C. CATE

Santa Ana

About a column on HBO’s movie about the McMartin case:

It was a casual throwaway line in your first paragraph that ticked me off. Since when did “hysteria” get coupled with the Japanese internment during World War II? When exactly did the decision become “hysterical”? Was it something in the ‘70s when Japanese American activists deemed it so?

Funny, it wasn’t “hysterical” in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s. Even the Japanese Americans directly affected by it at least understood it. But at some point, a few racist malcontents decide it was all about “racism, hysteria and failure of political leadership.”

Your first paragraph was an insult to the WWII generation. They had a war to win, and V-J Day wasn’t chiseled in stone yet. To criticize their decision is to presume you would have done it differently. Don’t flatter yourself.

But never mind those “hysterical racists.” They’re almost all dead anyhow. The important thing is to say what the Japanese community wants to hear. It’s ironic that even as you rail against the pack mentality of the press, you thoughtlessly buy into “popular” revisionism.

STEVEN FOSTER

Los Angeles

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About a column that chided Mike Wallace for asking CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour on “60 Minutes” if her looks contributed to her success:

Yikes! Don’t you ever get it? Irony, that is. And is it merely coincidence that Jennings, Brokaw, Rather are the best-looking studs in TV news? Do you think Rosenberg--or Wallace--would ever get to anchor anything? Howard, pleez!

MIKE WALLACE

New York