‘Values’ That Won’t Rock PBS’ Boat

Hail to diversity.

A television network that proclaims itself “public” has a special obligation to accommodate a vibrant array of ideas and political philosophies. Among other things, it should nourish its viewers with brain food by challenging convention and forcing them to re-examine their basic beliefs. It should be civil, but not so civil that it doesn’t at least occasionally kick butt.

Subjective analysis and strong, bracing points of view? If clearly labeled, bring them on. Thus, bring on Ben Wattenberg’s personal essay, “Values Matter Most.” It may coincide with your thoughts; it may change them or at least make you think about them; it may leave you rip-roaring mad. That’s how marketplaces of ideas should operate.

Yet here’s the double standard: PBS would be roasted by its critics from the political right if the program it’s airing tonight promoted values of the political left.

But it doesn’t. Wattenberg is a Democrat whose politics are conservative. If “Values Matter Most” were tilted much more to the right, he’d slide off the screen. There to catch him would be his ideological comrades, many of whom are congressional Republicans and others with influence who have unjustly accused PBS--always without any valid evidence--of using public monies to follow a liberal agenda.

You won’t hear a peep from them, though, about Wattenberg’s conservative agenda.

When it comes to pleasing those who matter most to the immediate destiny of PBS, “Values Matter Most” gleams with political correctness. It opens with the following statements from participants in a Dayton, Ohio, focus group:

* “It seems like no one wants to be responsible for anything anymore. It’s always somebody else’s fault.”

* “I was not working and [was] thrown into the welfare system. I saw people who wanted something for nothing. They don’t want to work.”

* “The day when we took prayer out of the schools, guns came in.”

* “I’m tired of all the entitlements. I’m tired of people taking handouts all the time and not contributing to society.”

* “The moral decay, I mean it scares me.”

Thus, given the extent to which much of Capitol Hill has swung to the right, no one in Congress will use this program to call for throttling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that disburses funds to PBS and National Public Radio. Contrast that with past urgings from GOP leaders that federal spending on CPB--14% of its budget--be dramatically curtailed, if not flat-out erased. Some wanted CPB privatized for philosophical reasons, others wanted to punish it for political reasons.

For awhile, public broadcasting appeared as endangered by congressional budget-slashers as other cultural institutions under attack from conservatives. CPB, however, somehow got through that late-summer crisis with its federal funding largely intact, thanks in part to lobbying from viewers who feared large government budget cuts would doom such classics as “Masterpiece Theatre” and Big Bird.

“Values Matter Most” is a hedge against that happening, as are other coming PBS programs whose sources--is it just a coincidence?--are politically conservative. One is “Searching for God in America,” an eight-part series produced by KCET in Los Angeles and hosted by conservative Orange County attorney Hugh Hewitt, a regular on that station’s “Life & Times” series. Another is a batch of animated family specials inspired by “The Book of Virtues,” a bestseller by former Secretary of Education William Bennett. And, just recently, PBS announced a five-year pact to develop family programs with Reader’s Digest.

A syndicated columnist, Wattenberg made news earlier this month when he wrote about his recent telephone interview with President Clinton, saying the President confessed to having “changed philosophically.” That and a few other portions of Wattenberg’s account of their conversation were later disputed by the White House. Wattenberg said the President had called him to discuss Wattenberg’s new book, also titled “Values Matter Most.”

With Wattenberg correctly branding it “my personal opinion,” the TV program is a microcosm of the book, the premise of both being that values have replaced the economy, stupid, as being America’s primary political issue in 1995. Wattenberg may well be right. Yet how one defines those values is open to discussion.

Although values don’t necessarily follow the contours of political ideology, the ones that matter to Wattenberg here are generally conservative values. His targets are liberals and the ever-moving, ever-reinvented Clinton, whom he refers to with justification as practicing the “zigzag politics of Zorro.”

*

He cites four value-related, hot-button issues--crime, welfare, education and affirmative action--in arguing that the very “something for nothing” philosophy that candidate Clinton railed against in 1992 has infected the nation and Clinton’s social policies as President. In only one of these, affirmative action, does Wattenberg present a balanced debate, with Harvard’s Christopher Edley briskly challenging the assertion by Shelby Steele of San Jose State University that affirmative action has been a “profound tragedy in American life.”

Otherwise, this is a discussion with only one side doing the discussing. And in the process, while never approaching the shrillness of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Wattenberg is not above making points through tricky tactics and sloganeering.

For example, he ambiguously ties the nation’s documented failures in education to doctrinaire Democratic liberalism (“If you accept the mind-set that society is guilty, why penalize students for getting low grades?”) without citing any evidence.

Wattenberg has his own snappy solution: “Hard work plus discipline equals reward. That is something for something.” Plus another bumper sticker for the nation’s crime problem: “A thug in prison cannot shoot your sister.”

Wattenberg brings on his charts a la Ross Perot and also sits in with focus groups in Dayton and Kansas City, where welfare is damned by former recipients (then why did they accept it?) and fathers of children on welfare (then why aren’t they supporting their children?). The essayist also speaks to a handful of academics and think-tankers, agreeing with everyone who does not agree with Clinton. Somewhere, Republicans are standing and applauding.

Thus, public TV appears off the hook for awhile. But you don’t get something for nothing. The “contract with America”: Are “Values Matter Most” and future PBS programs part of its fine print?

* “Values Matter Most” airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.