Dole’s Fade Out

Bob Dole rolled into Hollywood this week for what he called a sequel. Everyone knew what that meant. Dole was promising to pound the movie studios again for what he regarded as the wretched gore, sex and debasement to be found in their various product lines.

The original attack came a year ago when Dole described many movies as “nightmares of depravity” and told producers of gangsta rap, “you have sold your souls.” That attack hit close to the bone, as evidenced by a frenzied round of denials from the executive suites, and meanwhile his presidential campaign received a sizable boost.

So the promise of a sequel produced some titillation in town. Dole was coming back with his big stick! But the sequel never took place. Instead, during his two-day visit, Dole presented the political equivalent of a smiley face to Hollywood.

What happened? The answer is not certain, but the contrast in the two visits is dramatic. Arriving Monday, Dole took his entourage directly to Century City. To do what? Why, to see a movie.

He made an event of buying tickets to “Independence Day” for himself and wife Elizabeth. $4.75 each, a bargain. Then he emerged to pronounce the movie a winner because, mass destruction or no, “we won in the end.”

The next day Dole arrived at 20th Century Fox for the promised whuppin’. Perhaps everyone should have been tipped off by the location. Studio owners don’t normally donate their sound stages to politicians planning an evisceration of their industry.

In any case, the whuppin’ evaporated into the smog. Whereas, last year, Dole described Hollywood executives as “hiding behind free speech in order to profit from the debasing of America,” this time he said: “Many people in this town have been producing art that Americans can watch without wincing . . . and that’s my purpose in coming here today--to praise what is best in your industry. We thank you.”

And whereas last year he said of errant studios: “We will name their names and shame them as they deserve to be shamed,” and then fingered Time Warner as the biggest sinner in the bunch, this year he offered only positive examples of studios. The main recipient of praise turned out to be his host, 20th Century, which just happens to be the producer of “Independence Day.”

Not wanting to ignore the other studios, Dole offered his current list of movie winners: “Apollo 13,” “Forrest Gump” (that one was two years ago, but never mind), “Babe” and “Braveheart” (the blood and gore is OK because it’s “true to the story.”)

Oh, Dole did manage to take a few licks at some fat targets, such as the box office flop “Striptease.” But totally missing was the visceral anger of last year’s attack, the sense of a man shouting his frustrations from the fire escape.

In its place, he offered the bland encouragement of a Sunday deacon. Dole took a powerful speech from last year--tough, plain and direct--and converted it to something vaporous.

He looked, in short, like a man trying very hard to find the center of the sex-violence issue, and to occupy that center comfortably, without threat. That is the first rule of running for President, after all. As Richard Nixon--Bob Dole’s great mentor--is often quoted as saying: “Run to the left, then run to the right, but end up at the center.”

As he left 20th Century, that is where Dole had positioned himself on the issue of gore and Hollywood. In the fuzzy middle. Last year, after his first speech, it was easy to know whether you agreed with Dole or not. He said Hollywood executives produced smut, and he promised to pursue them until they changed their ways. Either you liked that idea, or you didn’t.

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After this week, it is not so easy to know. Dole seems to dislike smut, but he praises many of the smut-makers. Some violence (the “gratuitous” kind) is bad, but other violence (“we won in the end”) is OK. He likes movies with traditional values but doesn’t think “feel-good” always means “excellence.”

And so it goes. In the galaxy of issues surrounding a presidential election, the issue of smut and movies ranks small. Nonetheless, Dole’s fade toward the center demonstrates one reason Americans hate politics. They feel they are being tricked, subtly maneuvered by language that has gone dead of all meaning. And they are right.

In his speech last year, Dole said of his pursuit of Hollywood executives who produced what he regarded as smut: “We will contest them for the heart and soul of every child in every neighborhood. We will never surrender.”

But he did. And whether the rest of us agreed with him or not, we are all the poorer for it.

‘Dole’s fade toward the center demonstrates one reason why Americans hate politics. They feel they are being tricked, subtly maneuvered by language that has gone dead of all meaning. And they are right.’