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Sinners in the Hands of an Overjoyed ABC Executive

Posted By Matt On 22nd November 2004 @ 19:06 In Politics, Media Criticism | No Comments

In an article for the NY Times, Many Who Voted for ‘Values’ Still Like Their Television Sin, Bill Carter writes that there is a contradiction between the “moral values” mandate of the 2004 election and the risque programs Americans like to watch on television:

So if it is true that the public’s electoral choices are a cry for more morally driven programming, the network executives ask, why are so many people, even in the markets surrounding the Bush bastions Atlanta and Salt Lake City, watching a sex-drenched television drama?

[snip]

If moral and religious values were truly what people most wanted to see depicted on television, Mr. Moonves said, “I guess we’d be seeing ‘Joan of Arcadia’ doing better than ‘C.S.I.’ ‘’

Of course, the contradiction disappears completely if you consider the moral-values mandate to be but “a single ambiguous phrase coined by an anonymous exit pollster,” as Frank Rich has written. Rich points out that only twenty-two percent of the voters surveyed said that “moral values” was the most important issue for them in the election–hardly a mandate. It’s simply what the press has chosen to write about.

Bush seems to be a proponent of free-market philosophies–he consistently says that it is the market, rather than politicians in Washington, that should be determining fiscal policy. In this case, one would have to say that market forces have spoken loudly and clearly:

It’s the boobs, stupid.