Billboard a Landmark in Cultural Wasteland

Careful readers of the newspaper might have noticed two stories this week that were unrelated but undoubtedly linked.

One was about the demise of hell. It explained how Sunday preachers are watering down their warnings of pitchforks and lakes of fire, partly to avoid scaring parishioners away from the collection plate.

The other story concerns a West L.A. billboard promoting a new CD from Death Row Records. It depicts a cartoon character on a toilet with his pants down, and under the commode is a tough-guy boast containing a four-letter word for poo.

Obviously, hell was there for a reason.

The billboard is at Wilshire Boulevard and San Vicente, which puts it in L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss’ district. When I griped about it this week, Weiss said he shared my view, but wondered how we got so old so fast. Weren’t we among those who defended controversial pop figures like Lenny Bruce and Jim Morrison, and giggled over a puritan obsession with obscenity?

Yes, I said. But this is about pop culture in a death spiral, dragging all of us down with it.

Weiss agreed again, but worried that if we make too much of the billboard, we might play into the hands of its creators.

Maybe so. But what’s the cost of doing nothing?

“You sound like Dan Quayle giving his Murphy Brown speech,” Weiss said, referring to the former vice president’s attack on an unmarried TV mom. Are standards really lower than ever? Weiss wondered. “And who are the arbiters” of obscenity and taste?

Until further notice, I am.

I’m the guy, after all, who wrote about the promotion for the Bernie Mac TV show, which FOX aired during the World Series. In that promo, you may recall, Mac was seated on the can.

There’s actually something honest about this trend. Given what the pop culture factory cranks out, particularly in Hollywood, there’s a goodly amount that makes me want to reach for a plunger.

Let’s get a group shot the next time Hollywood lays an egg. Actors, writers, directors, producers, studio chiefs. Instead of the usual over-the-top billboard ad, let’s put them all up there on a giant commode.

And then why not do the same with the 8 million billboards for TV news teams, whose hairdos alone violate several of my own obscenity standards? And why do we need 12 million billboards for strip joints with names like Spearmint Rhino?

What in the world is with that name, anyway? Do they trot out naked pachyderms?

I’m convinced there are no standards in Southern California for visual clutter. Certainly not at Wilshire and San Vicente, where the first person I ran into on Tuesday was Patsy Garcia.

She looked at the billboard and said:

“I can’t believe it’s still up there. I work in an ad agency, and we all said the same thing. We didn’t think you could use the word [poo] on a billboard.”

Garcia took me up to the 10th-floor offices of D’Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles, where many of the windows offer a bird’s-eye view of the pinhead on the toilet.

“It’s the lowest common denominator principle,” said Kevin Yarbrough, an ad manager who finds himself ever more vigilant as he tries to protect his two kids from the steady advance of the crass and profane.

Scott Anderholt, an account manager who takes his three daughters to the Agoura Bible Fellowship, has the worst deal of all. The billboard practically fills his office window, making it seem as if he’s in the bathroom with this joker.

He gets to work in the morning, and that guy’s on the can.

He comes back from lunch, and the guy’s still on the can.

It’s the longest bathroom visit since Elvis died on the throne.

And looking beyond the billboard offers no relief to the churchgoing Anderholt.

Rising over the top of it is the House of Hustler, with “Flynt Publications” emblazoned across the building in Satan’s own script.

“I ignore it as much as possible,” Anderholt said. “And the good thing is that I’m facing west, so when the sun starts to set I close the blinds and can’t see any of it.”

He looked out the window again.

“The TV culture is now on billboards,” Anderholt lamented, saying his 15-year-old daughter is rebelling against her parents with all her might, and wants to see R-rated films, as her friends do.

Good luck, Dad.

I put in a call to Death Row Records, by the way, which had no comment. Instead, they referred me to a publicist who had no comment. It seems to me someone in the operation is expendable.

Meanwhile, neighbors circulated a petition calling for the billboard to come down. Councilman Weiss was investigating whether the thing violates decency standards, and whether Death Row even had permission to put it up.

Readers of my World Series column wrote to tell me Bernie Mac really was a pretty good show, for which I’d like to congratulate everyone involved. Others wrote to tell me what a schoolmarm I was, while still others called me a dope for having been shocked to discover that pop culture is circling the drain.

Allow me to clarify. I wasn’t shocked by the TV promo, and I’m not shocked by the billboard. If this stuff were shocking, it might actually have some social value.

The crime is that it’s obvious, unoriginal, crass, crude and vapid, and it can have no impact other than to diminish civility and lower the national IQ.

Eternal damnation got a bad rap if you ask me. Is it too late to bring back hell?

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com