How the left lost teen spirit

Bill Clinton won the youth vote. Al Gore split it with George Bush. Will Democrats realize they must embrace pop culture, not demonize it, to win back the White House?

By Andrew O'Hehir

Jun 17, 2003 | Danny Goldberg might be the demon who haunts Bill O'Reilly's and Rupert Murdoch's nightmares, even after the visage of Hillary Rodham Clinton has faded. In his new book, "Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit," the veteran music executive proudly confesses to being a quintessential Hollywood liberal (even if he moved back to New York, his birthplace, several years ago).

He did drugs in the '60s (and most definitely inhaled). He counts Barbra Streisand, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton among his personal friends. He opposed the war on drugs, the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's tax cuts. He is not merely a "card-carrying member" of the American Civil Liberties Union, but for many years played a key role in its activist, publicity-savvy Southern California chapter. Goldberg has met and consulted with every significant Democratic presidential candidate of the last two decades -- and, at least at times, has helped leverage significant amounts of Hollywood money, probably the most important source of left-wing campaign dollars. In what must be one of the odder couplings in cultural history, he introduced Ralph Nader to Patti Smith, thus helping make possible the packed Madison Square Garden rally that was probably the high-water mark of Nader's controversial 2000 presidential campaign.

Goldberg's impact on the music industry has been far-reaching. In a career as manager and recording executive that has encompassed working with such titans as Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain -- and such ephemera as Hanson, Shania Twain and the Baha Men ("Who Let the Dogs Out?") -- he has been among the most important behind-the-scenes figures in pop music for almost 30 years. As becomes clear when you read his book, in Goldberg's avocation as a political activist with access to both money and the publicity machine, he may have been every bit as influential.

Yet "Dispatches From the Culture Wars," as its subtitle suggests, is largely a saga of the battles Goldberg has waged against those who, at least officially, are on his side of the political fence. Of course we expect right-wing moralists like George Will, Jerry Falwell and William Bennett to excoriate the degenerate culture of pop music, he writes; that's been a defining theme of the cultural right since Elvis first gyrated his hips on "Ed Sullivan." (Goldberg was too young and obscure to make Richard Nixon's notorious enemies list, he jokes, so being attacked by the likes of Bennett and Robert Bork will have to do.)

But beginning in the mid-1980s, with the emergence of Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center, some of the most sustained and high-impact attacks on pop culture -- mainly meaning rap and heavy metal lyrics, video games and violent movies and TV programming -- have come from Democrats. As the music industry's self-appointed point man on the issue, Goldberg went toe-to-toe with Tipper on numerous TV panel shows, and "Dispatches From the Culture Wars" has lots of juicy detail on his private efforts to find some common ground with Tipper and her husband. (The private discussion between Goldberg and Al Gore on the interpretation of "With a Little Help From My Friends" is especially good.)

Goldberg's book is a fascinating memoir of the nexus where pop culture and left-wing politics collided throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s, and a cautionary tale directed at his own generation, the middle-class liberals of the baby boom who he fears are in danger of becoming their own intolerant parents. Perhaps in an effort to cleanse themselves of the cultural taint of the '60s, Goldberg speculates, Democratic middle-roaders like the Gores and, more recently and forcefully, Al's 2000 running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, have gone to considerable trouble to alienate themselves from contemporary youth and popular culture, sometimes by endorsing patently ludicrous attacks on constitutionally protected speech. These center-left moralists, themselves products of the tremendous cultural upheavals of the '60s and '70s, seem to believe, as Goldberg puts it, that pop culture was brought here by evil aliens and isn't actually, well, popular.

As Goldberg points out -- and no other political pundit, to my knowledge, has noticed this -- in 1996, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by 19 points among voters under 24. In 2000, George W. Bush and Gore were dead even in that age group, a total of about 9 million votes. Restore even half of Clinton's '96 edge with youth, and the result of the election is clearly different, with or without the much-debated Nader factor.

Neither Goldberg nor anyone else believes that Lieberman's fabulously misguided criticism of "Friends" (then the most popular show on the air) or Gore's attacks on hip-hop lyrics in his stump speeches were the main reason younger voters stayed away from their camp. But they certainly contributed to the general tone of a "sanctimonious yet wishy-washy" campaign that was bereft of ideals, focused on the arcane details of Social Security and fiscal policy and deaf to the real-life tastes and sensibilities of the American public. Goldberg quotes former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, a friend and ally, on this same point: "Most people in Washington, including those on the left, love the idea of America. but they don't like actual Americans very much. Americans are those gross people who go to shopping malls and watch television."

There is a larger syndrome at work here, in Goldberg's view. It's almost incredible to learn that a senior Democratic strategist, in the fall of 2002, had never heard of Eminem, but even Goldberg believes that's a symptom of the Democrats' dysfunction, not a cause. What he sees today is a party cast adrift, clueless on contemporary culture and desperately bereft of vision and inspiration. Goldberg believes the party is now dominated by a narrowly focused, puritanical and supposedly pragmatic elite group whose political legacy -- with the lone, anomalous exception of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns -- has been almost entirely one of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. This leadership has fled in terror from the areas where Democrats have actually had the greatest success, such as feminism, civil rights, environmentalism and lesbian and gay rights, and sought shelter in an ideology-free policy-wonk zone.

Meanwhile, Republicans have seized the ideological high ground, unapologetically spreading the gospel of capitalism and individual freedom and firing up a new generation of idealistic young conservatives. Despite its base on the Christian right, the congressional GOP has largely avoided joining in the Democrats' gratuitous attacks on entertainment. In 2001, Lieberman, along with Hillary Clinton, proposed the Media Marketing Accountability Act, a bill that edged closer to government censorship of the arts than anything proposed since the 1930s. Meanwhile, President Bush was posing with Bono for magazine covers and joking around with Ozzy Osbourne at the White House, and Attorney General John Ashcroft -- not exactly the type whose every pore oozes rock 'n' roll -- appeared on David Letterman's show to play "Can't Buy Me Love" on the piano. (Despite Lieberman's best efforts, not one Senate Republican agreed to co-sponsor his bill.)

Nobody wants to see Bob Graham onstage trying to flow with DMX or John Kerry trading choruses with Lauryn Hill. (Goldberg points out that roughly 80 percent of the music attacked by the new Puritans has been music made by and for black youth -- and that the critics seem utterly unable to tell the difference between the theatrical posturing of hardcore gangsta rap and the stylized political allegories of Mos Def.) But would it really be so daring for Democratic candidates to make it clear that they support free speech, and that what Americans want to watch and listen to is entirely their own business?

Wouldn't it be OK for candidates to the left of Bush to admit that fact, and to point out that they represent a party that, at least historically, has stood alongside the civil rights movement, the abortion rights movement, the environmental movement and the lesbian and gay liberation struggle? Wouldn't it be a good idea to quit quoting song lyrics entirely out of the lived, metaphorical and ambiguous context in which listeners experience them, and thereby coming off like the ludicrous school principal in a '50s teen movie? In other words, wouldn't it be great if the Democrats weren't such incredible dorks?

I met with Goldberg last week in the lower Fifth Avenue offices of Artemis Records, the independent label he has run since 1999. (His marquee artist is of course Steve Earle, whose song "John Walker's Blues" was so rampantly misinterpreted last year.) A rumpled, bearlike presence in an untucked shirt, Goldberg has a quick wit and rapid-fire delivery that belies his sleepy appearance. As we discussed left-wing elitism, the examples set by George McGovern and Barry Goldwater and the complicated case of Bill Clinton, he occasionally asked me to turn off the tape recorder so he could bark at callers. ("There's no deal. It's not cool to go around me and go to the lawyers. Call her back and tell her there's no deal.")

One of the arguments you make in "Dispatches From the Culture Wars" is that most of the conventional wisdom about politics has it backward. For example, the idea that the right has won the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans. You think that's completely wrong.

Well, it's wrong as far as culture goes -- on cultural issues, the so-called left clearly won. For all the people who complain about rap music, or about what time "Friends" should be on, it's clear what the results are. Rap is the biggest musical culture of the last two decades, and "Friends" is on at 8 o'clock and it's extremely popular. As far as the big issues of feminism go, look at the shopping list of what the founders of Ms. Magazine wanted when they started the magazine and it was considered this radical assault on traditional values. I think they got everything they wanted: equal pay for equal work, at least as a legal concept; women being accepted in different roles; abortion rights. There are arguments on the margins of the abortion issue, but there's no question that it went from being completely illegal to something that's legal and widely available. Look at the progress of gays and lesbians.

It's on cultural issues where the left has been most successful with the public, and on economic issues where they've had the biggest struggle, where they've lost. Yet a lot of people in the political world think the exact opposite. They delude themselves into thinking that their economic ideas and policy ideas are really popular and these social issues are dragging them down. But the facts are the opposite. Instead of running away from the culture, if I were on the left in the political world, I would embrace the culture. The culture reaches people they can't otherwise reach. Certainly Martin Luther King embraced the culture -- that was a major part of his strategy. Harry Belafonte was a key advisor of his. He used entertainers in many, many aspects of what he did, including the [1963] March on Washington [which featured performances by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Mahalia Jackson].

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