By Steve Beard, Reprinted from World, 11/27/93
February 1994 – Whoever said that perception is reality has never met Don Wildmon of the American Family Association. The caricature of Wildmon is that of an ignorant and reckless culture grouch. Reality, however paints a very different picture.
Wildmon is vastly more intelligent than his detractors would ever admit. He discusses cutting-edge radio technology with the ease of an electrical engineer. His forays into the culture war are strategized with the sophistication of a military operation. Wildmon is endowed with what the experts call savvy “street smarts.” Although he has a keen sense of right and wrong, he lacks the smugness of moral superiority.
Not one moment in his busy day is wasted. With the speed of a tornado, Wildmon darts around his 20,000 square-foot headquarters, rummaging through stacks of mail and dropping into offices unannounced to discuss his latest crusades. For an easygoing southern community like Tupelo, Mississippi – birthplace of Elvis Presley – Don Wildmon runs on a higher level of adrenaline than most folks.
Wildmon is one of America’s original culture warriors, the most formidable pain-in-the-neck for television network executives to ever walk the planet. He surfaced on the cultural radar screen back in 1977 as a concerned United Methodist minister who encouraged his congregation to protest Hollywood’s portrayal of sex, profanity, and violence by shutting off their television sets for a week. “Turn-The-TV-Off Week” gained national media attention and catapulted Don Wildmon into the spotlight.
From that, Wildmon has built one of the most effective grass-roots organizations in America. With an $11 million budget, AFA can wage some of the most impressive battles for traditional family values. The AFA Journal, Wildmon’s no-frills, information-packed monthly publication, goes out to 1.2 million families and 170,000 churches across the nation. His mailing list has grown by 50% over the last year, primarily through full-page newspaper ads.
NYPD Blue
His most recent barnstorm is the war against NYPD Blue, a new ABC television series laced with nudity, foul language, and graphic violence, something that producer Steven Bochco calls “pushing the envelope.” Wildmon’s efforts have been very successful. No, the show was not canceled; but it is losing a bundle of cash. “The name of the game is money,” Wildmon told World. “That’s their god.”
Not only have many local affiliates refused to air the series, ABC has also not been able to land mainstream, high-dollar advertisers. A program with NYPD Blue’s ratings should be attracting first-rate sponsors. Wildmon thinks the network is losing $l to $1.5 million a show.
“You can’t keep it off the air,” he says. “If they’re determined to show it, they’ll show it. But you can make them lose financially.”
Wildmon is now going after all the advertisers on local ABC affiliates, not just those found on NYPD Blue – mostly R-rated movies and new products. AFA recently sent out 1.6 million letters to supporters asking them to call the chairman of General Motors person-to person to request that he pull GM’s advertising from ABC. As network executives are well aware, Wildmon plays hard-ball. In a November 2 article even The New York Times admitted that “Mr. Wildmon’s campaign has been a smashing success in intimidating top name advertisers” to steer clear of the show.
His efforts have even become somewhat enjoyable. “It gives me a bit of joy to be able to kick ABC in the tail,” he says. “It’s getting to be a little fun now – winning a few.”
His philosophy is very simple: “Networks can show what they want to show. Advertisers can sponsor what they want to sponsor. And the consumer can buy what he wants to buy.” Those who accuse Wildmon of censorship are “either intentionally misleading or dumb,” he observes. “The biggest censors in the business are the network people who decide what they’re going to show. Technically speaking, censorship means prior restraint by the government, which was never advocated by AFA.
What the church refuses to do
“In the early years, I nearly lost my religion. Not because of arguments. Not because of networks. Not because of people calling me an S.O.B. or anything else.” Wildmon’s crisis of faith came when he met preachers and other Christians who would not lift a finger to clean up society because they were worried about prestige or status within a denomination. “There should be no need for AFA to be in existence. There’s no excuse. We’re doing the work the church won’t do.”
Wildmon believes that American society is suffering because the church is not engaging the culture. “Christians are going to have to seek careers in movies, radio, and television,” he says. “Preachers should be telling young people not only to go into the entertainment industry, but to go into law, politics, and education – into all these fields.”
Wildmon puts his money where his mouth is. Radio is his newest adventure. AFA’s radio station devotes about 70% of its air time to Christian contemporary music; the remaining 30% is devoted to Bible teaching or talk-shows. Through satellite technology, his radio station is also heard in 12 other cities, soon to be more.
Not everyone was thrilled when Wildmon got into radio. The public broadcasting people in Mississippi protested so loudly that his application for a radio station license took four years to process, rather than the normal nine months.
As much as he loves radio, Wildmon maintains a steady focus on AFA’s main purpose. “Jesus didn’t get himself crucified by helping hurting people,” he says. “He got himself crucified by opposing the powers that be, those that were corrupt and wanted to corrupt other people, too.”
AFA has 450 local affiliated organizations scattered throughout the nation. The groups are involved in initiating letter-writing campaigns to TV advertisers, organizing pro-life demonstrations, fighting local pornography peddlers, and providing information about local and state family-oriented legislation.
The newest AFA project is a nationwide counseling referral service for those addicted to pornography. They have begun to locate reliable Christian counseling centers around the country that treat porn addiction. Ever since they offered this service, AFA’s phones have been ringing off the hook with calls from both porn addicts and their spouses.
A few years ago, Wildmon also decided to hire a legal team to help fight his battles more effectively. The AFA Law Center began to “defend the First Amendment rights of Christians and to help in the prosecution of obscenity,” he says. AFA’s five attorneys have defended a variety of people, from those arrested for picketing abortion clinics to open-air preachers.
In January of this year, AFA opened its Washington, D.C. office. Pat Trueman, AFA’s director of governmental affairs, was the former head of the Justice Department’s Obscenity Task Force before the Clinton administration came to town.
A radio station. A law center. Effective national boycotts. A Washington office. A national porn addiction referral service. Local AFA chapters, many of which are self-supporting. Is all of this simply the toil of an ignorant and reckless culture grouch? Don’t believe it.
No popularity contest
Don Wildmon is a hard-driving southern gentleman who has dedicated his life to God. Because of that, he has only one fear in life: embarrassing the Lord. “I’m not trying to win a popularity contest. Money doesn’t motivate me. Power doesn’t motivate me. This is what God called me to do. I’d work here for nothing if I could.”
Wildmon heard God’s call when he was nine years old. “I struggled until I was 39 years old before I figured out what it was. And this is what I’m supposed to do,” he says confidently. “I don’t care about retiring. I’ll be doing this when I die.” (Wildmon has survived two heart attacks.)
One question remains: Does Wildmon watch TV? “I watch the Discovery channel and old movies,” he reveals. He does not recall recently watching an entire network program. “Hardly anything is funny on television anymore. If they didn’t put laugh tracks in, nobody would know when to laugh,” he believes. Wildmon likes the good-old-days of television: “Andy Griffith was funny, I Love Lucy was funny. The comedy today is sick comedy.”
A friend convinced him to go see A River Runs Through It. “It could have been a pretty good program,” he says, but he didn’t like the profanity or the ending. He also saw Wayne’s World: “I guess it was supposed to be funny. The humor was sick. It wasn’t funny a bit.”
Does anyone in Hollywood understand what Wildmon is all about? Yes, he reports. He has even gotten calls from closeted Hollywood allies. Surprisingly, most of his support comes from responses to ads that he places in the nation’s most notoriously liberal newspapers—The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.
In some ways, Don Wildmon is an unlikely national celebrity. He is not a charismatic leader, per se. He does not turn heads when you walk with him into a restaurant. He does not wear Armani suits and his shirts do not have stitched monograms, let alone cuff links. He does not try to turn up the charm when he talks to the press. Wildmon is thoroughly unpretentious. He would much rather be making life miserable for some television executive than singing his own praises. He is too busy to toot his own horn.
Besides, there is a culture war going on.
Wildmon does not have embroidered Bible verses hanging around his office. In fact, his small office has absolutely nothing hanging on the walls. His desk serves as a cluttered filing cabinet, yet he knows where everything is. He does not wear Christian lapel pins or try to impress you with his importance. “I’m not profound. I’m a fighter.”
Perhaps this is why so many people love and trust Don Wildmon. It may also explain why the networks hate him like they do. 
