Defending ‘Conscience of Hollywood’
Re: “Peter Bart Suspended as Editor of Variety,” A1, Aug. 18:
Is Peter Bart a big mouth? Yes. A provocateur ? Yes. Arrogant? Self-aggrandizing? Opinionated? Judgmental? Imperious? Insensitive? Absolutely. And God bless him for it.
Do these qualities make him unqualified to run Hollywood trade publications? Conversely, they--along with his other attributes: knowledge, experience and fearlessness--have made him the conscience of Hollywood. Variety has never been as well written, as evenhanded or less of a public relations cheerleading squad for the entertainment industry than it has been under his watch.
The concept that the editor of a trade publication has a conflict of interest if he’s friendly with studio chiefs and super-agents--and thus can call them up on the phone and check out stories with them--is ludicrous. That’s what they hired him to do!
The very words “trade publication” are a conflict of interest in and of themselves. Can a publication be journalistic at its core when all of its advertisements come from the very industry it attempts to cover objectively?
Bart has raised the sense of journalism at Variety, and by example also at its competition, the Hollywood Reporter, to a higher level than it has ever been. And I’ve been reading both since the 1950s.
His weekly column, often taking to task industry leaders and fair-haired stars, is the closest thing to a public conscience or moral center Hollywood has ever had. In a business built on ego, entitlement, cronyism and paranoia, he’s been known to report on the emperor’s nudity--even while on the way to the emperor’s house for dinner.
How about his views on race relations? He’s quoted as saying that his secretary, who, if I understand correctly, is a light-skinned African American, and whom he seems to care about very much, might be better off if she didn’t so closely view herself as black in the way he doesn’t view himself as primarily Jewish. Is this a controversial statement? Of course. Perhaps shocking to many of us. But it’s hardly anti-black. It’s opposed to the idea that being black is so different from being white that it should rule one’s life.
I happen to at least partially agree with his view here (although I’d never express it as insensitively as he did), as do most liberals of all races, at least of a certain age. But it’s an unpopular thought right now. It wasn’t unpopular in the 1960s, the era of integration, and it might not be again in the 2010s. To crucify a person for believing it, or for saying it out loud, is just about as morally reprehensible as crucifying him because he’s black or Jewish. (Does Bart seem to be embarrassed at being Jewish? Yes. Do I like him for that? No. Is that a reason to fire him? Not unless his job is as a rabbi.)
Americans hold some very weird views about black and white. We call light-skinned blacks (there’s an oxymoron) “black” when it’s obvious that they’re not--they’re a mixture of black and white or of black and some other race. We put on blinders and ignore the fact that there is a lot of prejudice among African Americans (as well as among European Americans) against darker-skinned blacks. These views are left over from slave days and are vastly more insidious than anything Bart has ever said. Bart was commenting on them, not promoting them.
The man is 69 years old. His mind is not going to work like that of a 22-year-old who’s been brought up with superficial political correctness instilled in him by his parents, teachers and liberal arts professors.
Bart is also accused of selling a script disguised as a novella to Paramount Pictures as a vehicle for his friend Robert Evans to produce. Comparing their careers of the past 20 years, I’d say this was more of a favor to Evans than to Bart. And if he managed not to break his employers’ rules by rewriting the script as a book, he deserves a “touche,” not a pink slip.
If Variety were to fire Bart for the things he’s being accused of, that act would be vastly more fatuous, immoral, self-serving and hypocritical than anything he’s accused of having done.
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Bob Shayne is a longtime and award-winning television writer-producer who wrote the recent Calendar article “No Experience Wanted,” about age discrimination in the television industry.