NOW ON FOX! IMMORAL VALUES
MY OPINION
Published on: 12/31/04
ajc.com.
As we all know by now, Fox television is the home of traditional family values, unimpeachable morality and conservative politics. We know that because we've been told often enough by Fox's on-camera personalities, including accused sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly. And Fox's viewers — many of whom are moral-values Bush-voters — obviously agree.
So perhaps there is some hidden emotional uplift and morality about the new unscripted Fox show, "Who's Your Daddy?," scheduled to debut on Jan. 3. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what it could be.
The premiere episode pits a woman who was adopted as an infant against eight men, each of whom tries to convince her that he is the biological father she has never met. If she correctly picks her biological father from among the imposters, she wins $100,000. If she guesses incorrectly, the man who was able to deceive her gets the $100,000. It's a new low in the exploitation of sensitive and emotionally charged private matters for prurient viewing.
But then, Fox pioneered the fine art of matching the basest human emotions (greed, thirst for celebrity, the insatiable desire to view public humiliation) with the most supercharged of human desires (the longing for romance, the desire for beauty, the need for familial acceptance) in so-called reality shows. Among other travesties, Fox gave American culture the appalling "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?," a miasma of greed and deception that made a mockery of marriage.
Fox also has been socked with a record-setting federal government fine — $1.2 million — for violating decency standards on a show called, "Married By America." Last season, Fox introduced an unscripted show about wife-swapping.
Those shows, like so many others of their ilk, were lapped up by the red-state voters who claim to despise such cultural degradation. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. — which owns both Fox News and Fox Broadcasting Co. — has created a stable of morally repugnant programming because viewers flock to it. (Murdoch, an ultraconservative who contributes heavily to GOP causes, worships money above all.)
An enduring paradox of our times is that the very people who enjoy watching trashy television heap so much opprobrium on the machinery that gives it to them. Red State America hates Hollywood, according to its self-appointed leaders. After national elections in which "moral values" supposedly trumped other concerns, Karl Rove summed up the results: "I think it's people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies."
Yet red-staters can't get enough of that coarseness. Take this season's breakaway hit, ABC's "Desperate Housewives." One of the show's tawdry plot lines involves a 30-something married woman who is having an affair with her 17-year-old gardener. During November sweeps, the show had higher viewership in red-state markets such as Atlanta, where the show is enormously popular, than in the blue-state markets of New York and Chicago. (The Atlanta TV market comprises an overwhelmingly Republican stronghold of 54 counties stretching from Upson to Fannin.)
None of the nationally known spokesmen for so-called family values — men such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family or Ken Connor of the Family Research Council — have called for a boycott of "Desperate Housewives." Nor did they mount a protest against Fox's (mercifully) shortlived "Playing It Straight," in which a young woman had to guess which men among her several dates were gay. And they haven't joined the outcry against "Who's Your Daddy?," which trivializes the complex emotions surrounding adoption and, by extension, undermines adoptive families. Apparently, they see no evil.
If viewers in the heartland are offended by the coastal media elites, they have a funny way of showing it. By tuning in to entertainment that celebrates adultery, dysfunctional families and naive adoptees broadcasting their most private affairs, they're making sure that moguls such as Murdoch laugh at them all the way to the bank.
• Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. |
