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Jewish World Review April 5, 2005 / 25 Adar II, 5765 A turn to the right... 10 minutes with nationally syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved By Bill Steigerwald
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Nationally syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved will be broadcasting live Monday and Tuesday from Grove City College, which is conducting a two-day conference on the dismal past and unpromising future of the 40-year federal war on poverty.
A veteran critic of Hollywood's films, destructive cultural messages and liberal politics, Medved is the former co-host of PBS' "Sneak Previews" and best-selling author of such books as "Hollywood vs. America."
His latest book is "Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life," which he will be signing at the Barnes & Noble in Cranberry at 7 p.m. Monday. A former 1960s liberal turned "impassioned conservative," Medved's talk show is aired locally on 73WPIT from 6 to 9 p.m. I talked to him Wednesday by telephone from his Seattle home:
Q: You were once a liberal. What was it that made you "defect" to conservatism?
A: Well (laughs), it basically takes over 400 pages to explain with any integrity. But in short, I will tell you that it was a gradual process. There was no "Road to Damascus" experience. It was an evolution, not a revolution. One of the key episodes for me was the conclusion of the Vietnam War, because I had been very involved with the anti-war movement and all those sunny predictions that as soon as America left Vietnam then peace would reign and the killing would stop.
...There were literally millions of people who died in Vietnam and Cambodia as a result of America's withdrawal. It seemed to me that far from the promises of the peace movement — that American withdrawal from the war would reduce the total level of suffering and killing — there's very good indication that the way we withdrew caused a tremendous increase in human suffering.
Q: Is there a single most important unconventional lesson that you learned?
A: One of the lessons that is most unconventional and controversial is that a more Christian America is good for the Jews. I'm openly Jewish
... and I'm convinced that American Jews ultimately have far more to fear from militant fundamentalist secularism than we do from Christianity in any form. I think the current Christian revival that is going on is a tremendously positive thing for the Jewish community, because it is a tremendously positive thing for America and because it leads to an overall willingness to take religious faith more seriously. And that is something that we in our community need very much to do.
Q: Is there any position you hold that would pleasantly surprise a liberal?
A: Yeah. I'm a conservationist. I support a fairly wide range of conservation-orientated organizations. One of the few government programs that I think has worked beautifully is the National Park Service, which I support. I think that conservatives ought to acknowledge that most environmental laws — most, not all — including the ones we decried have actually worked out well.
Q: Would that same pro-environmentalist position shock a conservative?
A: I do a daily radio show, so I have the opportunity to shock people all the time. One of the positions that I've taken that has shocked a lot of my listeners — horrified them, in fact — is that I think that in certain circumstances it is not inappropriate to block adoption by gay couples. To be very clear about this, I would say that in every case a preference in adoption should be given to a heterosexual, married, stable couple. If, however, your only alternative is a single parent or a gay couple, I would tend to prefer, as a situation for adoption, a gay couple — assuming that they were stable, honorable, positive public citizens.
Q: You've been saying that our popular culture has been consistently hostile to the values that America holds dear since 1993. Has it gotten any better or worse?
A: I think that it's gotten better in one sense, that there are more attempts — and some of them very successful — to create a kind of counterculture to what people view as the semi-official "Hollyweird" mainstream. There is a flourishing Christian and religious counterculture in this country. One of the fastest-growing music formats is CCM — Contemporary Christian Music. The tremendous success of the series of novels, the "Left Behind" series, indicates that people who have long felt assaulted and insulted by Hollywood are turning to other sources for some of their entertainment. I also think the development of cable TV, of talk radio and of particularly the Internet have achieved a great decentralization so that we're no longer as dependent on, or subject to, the whims of a handful of network and big-studio executives.
Q: Why is Hollywood's value system so out of sync with the country's values system — and hasn't that always been true?
A: I don't think that's true at all. As a matter of fact, Hollywood used to be famous for making patriotic love letters to America and American society and American history.
The darker vision of American life — you could say that it turned up from time to time in the film noir movement, for instance. But generally, Hollywood was famous for upbeat entertainment. What it used to mean to have a "Hollywood ending" was an ending where everything worked out for the best, and the Stars and Stripes were fluttering overhead. But look, the other key thing is that part of my criticism of Hollywood is that it is so unrepresentative politically, and that also is a very new thing. It used to be that a lot of the major executives and stars were open, unapologetic Republicans. In fact, Louis B. Mayer, who was the longtime head of MGM Studios, was also for more than 10 years the chair of the Californian Republican Committee. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable — some of the greatest stars of years' past — were open campaigners for the GOP. Today, it is extremely rare to find people in Hollywood who will have anything to do with the Republicans. In fact, two out of three Republican actors in Hollywood go on to be governor of California.
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JWR contributor Bill Steigerwald is an associate editor and columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Bill Steigerwald |
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