By Cal Thomas, Syndicated columnist
January 1994 – When the Mississippi Methodist minister, the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association, criticized ABC’s “NYPD Blue” for its heavy doses of sex, violence and profanity, television critic Jonathan Storm of the Philadelphia Inquirer referred to Wildmon and his supporters as a “menagerie of reactionary bozos.”
It will be interesting to see what Storm and other anti-censorship watchdogs say about Attorney General Janet Reno, who last week delivered the strongest threats yet heard that if the networks don’t reduce the depiction of violence, government will pass laws that will do it for them.
During the 1980s, Hollywood liberals fought all efforts to impose air quality controls on the pollutants they dump into the cultural mainstream. Will they now lash out at the Clinton administration? Will television producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, certified “Friends of Bill,” head a lobbying effort to ward off controls on their industry, especially after all they did to get Clinton elected?
This administration sees an opportunity to gain political points by hitting an easy target, television, and then only broadcast television (not cable), and only one category: violence. They are not threatening to deal with even more graphic violence, illicit sex and profanity promoted in gangsta rap music, on MTV videos and other so-called entertainment.
Wrong target
Motion Picture Producers Association President Jack Valenti thinks the administration is aiming at the wrong target. The real root of violence, says Valenti, is the erosion of values. Television can help the process along, but it is not the sole cause of societal disintegration.
But doesn’t it seem hypocritical for a liberal administration to threaten to censor broadcast networks when so many of Clinton’s political persuasion were attacking people who raised the same concerns a decade ago?
Of the Rev. Wildmon, the man the networks love to hate, these were some comments made in the 1980s by network executives: ABC TV President James Duffy said Wildmon leads “a band of moral zealots . . . busy inventing a national problem.” Gene Mayer, executive vice president of CBS TV, said, “We look upon Wildmon’s efforts as the greatest frontal assault on intellectual freedom this country has ever faced.” And Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC Entertainment, said Wildmon’s boycott campaigns are “the first step toward a police state.”
A decade ago, the networks and program producers said if you don’t like what they broadcast, change channels or turn it off. It will be interesting to see what they say now that politicians more favorable to their political viewpoints (but at least as intolerant of their programming as Donald Wildmon) are now threatening to decide what is fit for public consumption.
Don’t look for Norman Lear’s People for the American Way to launch an anti-censorhip campaign against the Clinton administration. And don’t wait for former NBC Chairman Grant Tinker to criticize Janet Reno the way he attacked Wildmon in 1989 when he told the Washington Post’s Tom Shales, “I think he’s a jerk—let’s start with that. The fact that he arrogates unto himself the suggestion that he should make judgments about what is and isn’t appropriate television is just beyond comment, it’s so bizarre.” Can anyone imagine Tinker (or any other Hollywood type) calling Janet Reno a jerk? Yet she is making some of the same points Wildmon made.
As we watch a liberal like Janet Reno behaving like the previously maligned “blue nosed, puritanical, ultra-fundamentalist, know-nothing, intolerant ministers,” I remember a line made famous by the late comedian Jackie Gleason that now seems appropriate: “How sweet it is!” 
