Trinity Network Reaction Is Just Too Pat

The Trinity Broadcasting Network’s dropping of Pat Boone’s weekly half-hour show is no laughing matter.

At least not totally.

It’s understandable that viewers of the conservative Christian television network thought Boone had lost his mind when he went on ABC-TV’s “American Music Awards” show Jan. 27 dressed like a heavy metal singer--tattoos, black leather and all.

Who didn’t?

“In a Metal Mood,” the album that Boone was promoting in the TV appearance, is possibly the single worst collection ever placed on a record store shelf. It features a dozen harmless songs that have been associated with the heavy metal genre, reworked with big-band arrangements and limp vocals. Sales have been dismal and the album has disappeared from the charts after just two weeks.

But the Trinity viewers weren’t measuring the artistic merits or commercial wisdom of Boone’s album.

The demand--reportedly from thousands of TBN supporters--that Trinity drop Boone’s show suggests they felt the singer, one of the nation’s best-known Christian entertainers and a symbol of clean-cut entertainment for four decades, had lost his religious faith.

That’s a big leap.

But it is exactly the kind of overreaction that--on an even larger and more troubling scale--has accompanied heavy metal rock music since the ‘70s, when the dark, explosive style was popularized by such groups as Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, the Scorpions and Motorhead.

While they’re laughing at the ridiculousness of this week’s Boone incident, millions of parents need to ask themselves whether they have been guilty of the same kind of closed-mindedness when it comes to various forms of rebellious music--from heavy metal, the classic offender, to rap, the latest rage.

Not all bands that have embraced the aggressive sonic assault of heavy metal have employed the tactic, but scores found that a sure way to the top of the charts was to program so much outrage into the lyrics and album covers that parents would be sure to recoil in horror.

If symbols of Satan caused a stir, they used those symbols. If gruesome tales of carnage and death sold more records, they spun the tales.

Seeing it from afar, alarmed parents bought the bait. The more extreme of them branded the bands as messengers of Satan.

Instead of seeing the whole thing for the cartoon hucksterism that it was, many parents saw it as a danger, even forbidding youngsters to bring the albums into the house. All of which made the music and the bands more attractive to kids. It was the ultimate means of rebellion.

Beneath the leather pants and Gothic tales, most youngsters understood the joke.

And, they survived. Parents today--whose own parents shuddered over Alice Cooper and KISS--now take the whole family to see the KISS concerts. Last year’s KISS reunion filled arenas around the country.

At the same time, legions of parents now see those acts’ descendant, Marilyn Manson, as the new threat. City councils debate whether the group, whose million-selling album is titled “Antichrist Superstar,” should be allowed in their boundaries.

So, truly, the beat goes on.

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Looking back at the history of rock rebellion, more people have been damaged by parental overreaction to heavy metal than by listening to heavy metal itself. Youngsters grow out of the silly child stuff, but breakdowns in communication can scar for a lifetime.

We’ve all been troubled by periodic news stories about young people carrying out horrible acts that they say were inspired by listening to heavy metal albums (or by seeing violent movies or TV shows), but this is far more limited than anxious parents believe.

By attacking or banning something as ultimately unimportant as heavy metal music, parents could lead their children to question the adults’ judgment in other, more serious areas, including sex and drugs.

Instead, parents need to maintain a dialogue with youngsters, instilling the values that equip them to choose between what is healthy and what is harmful.

That’s the antidote for heavy metal menace, if anyone feels there is one.

As for Pat Boone, he should be forgiven his misguided televised marketing ploy. Please, TBN, take him back . . . as long as he promises to not make a gangsta rap album.