Post-Election, Hollywood Seen as Liability to Left

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood is licking its wounds after an election that saw voters not only reject the candidate it anointed -- Democrat John Kerry -- but repudiate the values that the liberal stronghold cherishes.

Now, amid the second-guessing and recriminations that inevitably haunt the losing side, some are beginning to ask: Has Hollywood become a liability to the Democrats?

Political analysts said that polarizing figures such as Michael Moore -- whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary bitterly attacked President Bush -- alienated Middle America as much as they galvanized the faithful.

"There's no question that some Republican voters feel pistol-whipped by famous people getting involved in presidential elections," said Jonathan Wilcox, who teaches a course on celebrity and society at the University of Southern California.

He said Hollywood rhetoric, such as comments attributed to the singer Cher suggesting Republican right wingers would force gays to live in a single state, showed "a degree of dialogue that goes beyond political license."

Even some in the entertainment industry who lent their famous names to Kerry's losing cause, only to find themselves nursing a hangover when all of the votes were counted, were rethinking their approach.

"I was a little reckless with my comments, to be honest," the rapper known as P. Diddy, who sided with Kerry and organized a "Vote or Die" campaign aimed at getting young people to the polls, told MTV on election Day.

He was referring his use of a vulgar call for supporters to vote Bush out of office.

P. DIDDY HAS SECOND THOUGHTS

"I learned a lot in this process. I learned that my power could be used better," he said. "Instead of attacking Bush, it would have been better to light a flame under young Americans and let them make the decisions."

Moore remains unrepentant. "We're not going away," his Web site reads.

In making the case for a Hollywood backlash, many point to a fund-raising event for Kerry at New York's Radio City Music Hall last July, where actress Whoopi Goldberg mocked Bush in crude sexual terms.

Instead of distancing himself from such inflammatory rhetoric, Kerry appeared to embrace it, telling the crowd after Goldberg's routine that she and other performers "conveyed to you the heart and soul of America."

The Bush campaign soon seized on the remarks. "President Bush doesn't think it's the heart and soul of America," said Nicolle Devenish, the campaign's communications director.

While it was only a snapshot in a long campaign, such moments stand out after Americans told exit pollsters that "moral values" was their top issue in selecting a president.

"Kerry may have been too much identified with the Hollywood left and I think that hurt him," said Republican political analyst Allen Hoffenblum.

"Clinton could get away with it because voters already knew who he was and they just saw him as being starry-eyed. They never perceived him as being a left-winger.

"But when Kerry surrounded himself with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen and Michael Moore, many voters concluded 'well, this guy must be a real liberal,"' Hoffenblum said.

Dan Whitcomb

Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited.