Edition: U.S. / Global

Journal;No Bravehearts Here

Published: March 27, 1996

I don't believe that the bicoastal American show-biz and media elite are a bunch of pious and arrogant hypocrites. But if I did, I'd sure be having a ball right now watching two of that elite's most hallowed annual, star-filled rites -- Hollywood's Oscar show and Washington's Radio-Television Correspondents Association dinner -- expose the pretensions of their black-tie invitees.

For me at least, the appeal of this year's Oscar night had little to do with the race between Mel Gibson and the pig. The real fun was to see if anyone in Hollywood's liberal establishment, never shy in the past about using the telecast as a soapbox, would step up to defend the movie industry against the loud and persuasive recent charges that its record as an equal-opportunity employer rivals that of the O'Haras in "Gone With the Wind."

The defense never came -- mainly because there isn't one. This month's embarrassing People magazine expose -- which revealed the percentage of black employees in the upper, decision-making echelons of moviemaking to be in the low single digits -- can only be disputed by either changing the subject (to TV, where minority representation is higher) or by dissing Jesse Jackson (who tried to ride People's coattails to an Oscar-night protest).

"You can count the black creative executives at the major studios on two hands," said one of those executives a few hours before the Oscar broadcast, speaking by phone only on condition of anonymity. "No industry in the country is more closed than Hollywood."


Yet no industry in the country may give more money to the Democratic Party, which fights such exclusionary employment practices, than Hollywood. Whoopi Goldberg, the Oscar show host, also spoke at a luncheon in 1994 that raised $200,000 for liberal Democratic political candidates who largely support affirmative action; Hillary Clinton was the guest of honor. Moguls who have the clout to hire whomever they want for their studio bureaucracies are also outspoken contributors to liberal politicians.

So why doesn't affirmative action begin at home in Hollywood? We're less likely to get a straight answer to that question than we are to get a sequel to "Waterworld."

But Tinseltown hypocrisy, rife as it is, didn't have the stage to itself this week. There has been an equally amusing parallel farce in Washington, the other company town ruled by a clubby media establishment that will sometimes abandon principle as it runs for cover.

This year the Correspondents Association invited the radio star Don Imus to deliver the annual comic monologue at its dinner, which is traditionally attended by the President, the First Lady and Congressional leaders. Mr. Imus is known for his scabrous and sometimes ribald insults aimed at politicians and journalists alike -- many of whom, from the President and Bob Dole to Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, have sampled them firsthand by appearing on his show. So what did Mr. Imus do at the dinner? Exactly what he does on the radio.

In the melee that followed, the White House press secretary, Mike McCurry, tried to cajole C-Span into suppressing its video replay of Mr. Imus's performance. You'd think at that point the Radio-Television Correspondents Association would have countered by criticizing Mr. McCurry for attempting an end run around the First Amendment -- which protects journalists, not just Mr. Imus, when they are rude to Presidents. Instead, the dinner's organizers cozied up to power and obsequiously apologized to the White House for Mr. Imus's behavior, as if it had caught the association, which commissioned his behavior in the first place, completely by surprise.

"He always separates his raunchiness from the political part of his show," said Cokie Roberts of ABC by way of explaining to Time why she was scandalized by his performance at the dinner. Ms. Roberts has been a frequent guest on the Imus show, and, based on my own experience in that hot seat, if she seriously believes he always separates raunchiness from politics, she must be listening only to herself.

Next to the disingenuousness of the journalists, Mr. Imus's tastelessness, funny and not, at least had the virtue of being candid. I guess it's too much to hope that he'll turn up as host at the Oscars next year.