-Caveat Lector-
Sunday, February 4, 2001
A place where political satirists dare not go
By Karen Heller
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
In the satirist's world, political correctness equals death.
If politics in the new Bush order appears astonishingly genteel and
bipartisan, this won't deter comics, cartoonists,
pundits and post-prime-time jesters who circle elected officials like
vultures regarding fresh kill.
So it was not surprising when Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of
South Park - either the funniest people
in television or the crassest, depending on your sensibility - announced that
their live-action sitcom That's My
Bush! would take weekly potshots at the First Family. The show, billed as a
road-rage version of the Dick Van
Dyke Show, is scheduled to debut on Comedy Central in the spring.
"Our big thing that we're really excited about is the Bush twins, Jenna and
Barbara," Parker said last month,
"because we're just going to find the two hottest . . . girls and make them
always just about to make out for some
reason."
Well, no.
Politicians are one thing. Politicians' children are another.
In short order, executives at Comedy Central, owned by Viacom and AOL Time
Warner, received a barrage of
incensed calls from corporate, Viacom's Washington lobbyist, and watchdog
groups, though not the White House.
And a very short while later, four weeks to be exact, Stone and Parker
retrenched.
"If we felt creatively that we needed them in, we would fight it," Parker
said. "It's just not something worth fighting."
"We aren't comfortable with them being in the show," Comedy Central spokesman
Tony Fox said about the
19-year-old college freshmen. "There's some question about their status as
public figures."
President George W. Bush has already made that clear.
His daughters, who appeared at the inauguration, are not public figures. They
did not campaign. They have not,
and will not, speak publicly, following in the tradition of the sphinxlike
Chelsea Clinton, who appeared everywhere
without uttering a sound.
"I am going to be angry at people mistreating my girls in the public arena.
I'm going to let people know if they do,
too," the President has said.
The majority of the press, though not the tabloids, has agreed to honor his
wishes to be "respectful of these two
girls." Jay Leno, Dave Letterman and Saturday Night Live's Will Ferrell have
been content to focus exclusively on
their father. Laura Bush, unlike her predecessor, has also been exempted from
their barbs.
Presidential progeny stumble into celebrity through the accident of birth
and, for the most part, have been left
alone to lead fairly private public lives, Alice Roosevelt Longworth and John
Kennedy being two notable
exceptions.
Some presidential children, such as the logorrheic Patti Davis/Reagan and
Dolley Madison's alcoholic,
inveterate-gambler son, John Payne Todd, embarrassed their parents on their
own.
Margaret Truman sang at White House recitals, and was reviewed savagely. Her
father made it clear, in language
unprintable here, what he would do to these critics and banned them from the
premises. During the Vietnam War,
Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl ridiculed the conservative daughters of Presidents
Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M.
Nixon.
Saturday Night Live skewered Amy Carter, as did many cartoonists, after her
father said he had discussed the
threat of nuclear war with her.
"Gentility has little to do with political cartooning. I remember
[cartoonist] Mike Peters making fun of poor little
Amy," says Ohio State University professor Lucy Shelton Caswell, a historian
of political cartoons. "In some ways,
maybe the Amy Carter situation provided some lessons."
For all the viciousness in politics during the last decade, humor was often
kinder. The most dominant comedian of
the Clinton era was the apolitical Jerry Seinfeld, whose favorite subject of
ridicule is himself.
Despite the public airing and tensions of the adult Reagan children, they
were largely left alone.
But early in the Clinton presidency, SNL poked fun at adolescent Chelsea's
appearance, and Rush Limbaugh
was merciless, inviting the wrath of her mother. In June 1998, Sen. John
McCain made a malicious joke at
Chelsea's expense at a Republican fund-raiser.
The satire backfired.
"You ought to assail the wicked and powerful, not the weak and innocent,"
says Randy Cohen, a former writer for
David Letterman and the Ethicist columnist for the New York Times. "Another,
you attack what is volitional, not
something about which the subject had no choice. You can attack Henry
Kissinger for being a blood-soaked war
criminal - something he chose to do - but not for being less than a handsome
man, something about which he had
no say."
Cohen adds: "More to the point, private citizens, even a president's kids,
ought to be allowed to remain private
citizens. Unless they inject themselves into public discourse, it's hands
off. If they choose to participate in the
public debate, say by campaigning for their dad or speaking out on his
policies, then they are fair game, as are
any other public figures."
Humor directed toward the children of the powerful, even adult children,
rarely succeeds. "It's a violation of a
taboo. You always spare the children in war," even humor's war of words, says
Sarah Blacher Cohen, a professor
at the State University of New York at Albany and general editor of the book
series Humor in Life and Letters.
"Humor is camouflaged aggression. Sometimes the aggression can be so strong
it appears as if you're vilifying
these innocent kids."
Historically, humorists and cartoonists have been rough on presidents,
rougher on their wives. Eleanor Roosevelt
was depicted as grotesque. Commentators made fun of Ida McKinley's severe
epilepsy. Nancy Reagan was too
much of a clotheshorse, and Rosalynn Carter and Barbara Bush, too plain.
"All the first ladies, beginning with Martha Washington, who was accused of
aping royalty, have been subject to
criticism that has been severe, ugly and partisan," says Robert P. Watson,
editor of the journal White House
Studies and author of The Presidents' Wives. "With the wives, the press has
to be given a failing grade, but it
gets a passing grade for its treatment of the presidents' children."
Stone and Parker did not vote in the presidential election, but say they
incline Republican. Parker described their
live-action sitcom about Bush and his family as "subversive" because "we're
going to make you love this guy."
He was surprisingly accepting of Comedy Central's decisions. "They're a
corporation, and as much as we like
everyone over there and think it's the best place we can possibly be, they're
still a corporation. The bottom line is
it's not about freedom for them, it's about making money."
Nor has it hurt that Stone and Parker have generated considerable publicity
about a situation that never happened
on a program that has yet to appear.
Karen Heller's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
© 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
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