LOS ANGELES - Detroit, the motor town, might have been a good place for this Democratic convention. Or Philadelphia, the city of swinging voters where the Republicans met a fortnight ago. But Los Angeles?
Democrats will win this sprawling city of ugly freeways anyway and, unlike excited Philadelphia, LA is so used to big shows it seems bored with this convention. There are so many "nobodies" on the podium.
Los Angeles might be one-third Hispanic and the capital of the working poor, as it has been called, but to the world it's tinsel town, and its export is entertainment. As such, it is used to politicians blaming America's school shootings or marriage breakdowns on Hollywood culture. The best celluloid heroes are flawed heroes, and Bill Clinton, as Shirley MacLaine gushed this week, is "a mirror for all of us".
Why would Al Gore, the stolid family man trying to dominate the convention with his own personality and priorities, choose Bill's town for his debut, particularly when his running mate, Joe Lieberman, thinks that Friends is too sexy for prime time?
Lieberman is on the ticket because he is a Jew and because nobody can imagine him dropping his trousers in the Oval Office. The man who did, Clinton, received a look-alike Oscar after his final big performance at the convention this week, and held it aloft as though he were Kevin Spacey.
Gore and Lieberman are unlikely to receive such high honours, but it hardly matters. At a forum this week, leading entertainment figures explained why they don't give a toss about Lieberman's appointment and why, whoever wins the White House, politicians will keep complaining about Hollywood and nothing will change. It's not that Hollywood is any different from other big industries' interaction with Washington, it's that it's exactly the same.
Patrick Caddell is a long-time Democratic pollster and the script consultant for a hit television series, The West Wing, about a Democratic president (Martin Sheen) and his savvy staff. Politicians love it, and Madeleine Albright has suggested that there really should be a secretary of state character, and it really should be a woman.
"Politics now works on the basis of money," Caddell said. "Even if Lieberman is right [about too much sex and violence in the industry], it's [stronger industry regulation] not going to happen ... like any industry in America, you buy protection service."
Protection doesn't come cheap. The industry has donated $US5.9million ($10million) to Democrats since January last year, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, and that was before this convention. Hollywood has given Republicans $US3.7million.
But it's worth it, just as it is for the gun, communications and oil industries. Hollywood wanted, and got, open trade with China, tax-free Internet purchases and resistance to censorship.
Even someone like the film industry's chief lobbyist, Jack Valenti, who contends that politicians and stars share DNA, a need for attention and the ability to read somebody else's script, argues that money is "vermin eating away at political capital".
Soft money - unregulated, unlimited donations from corporations and unions that have made a mockery of the post-Watergate campaign laws to protect against corruption - is "the most squalid, sordid intrusion into the body politic", Valenti said. "It's wrong but it is out of control. There is excess in politics now that is so despoiling, so soiling, but every politician [knows] that he has to engage it because you either do it or you die."
As the panel agreed, it's easier for politicians to talk about the corrupting influence of Hollywood than the corrupting influence of money. And nothing is likely to be done about either.
Copyright © 2000. The Sydney Morning Herald
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