Strange bedfellows on the litmus test express

By BRIAN LOWRY

Oliver Stone

AT FIRST GLANCE, it would be hard to imagine stranger bedfellows than Mel Gibson and Oliver Stone.

Still, advance publicity surrounding Stone's fundamentally apolitical film "World Trade Center" (which prompted second-guessing from conservatives over whether the conspiracy-minded filmmaker is an appropriate vessel for this patriotic tale) gave way to talk of "professionally shunning" Gibson, as Endeavor principal Ari Emanuel suggested on Huffingtonpost.com.

The anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Gibson following his drunk-driving arrest are contemptible, just as some of Stone's movies bastardize history. Nevertheless, the broader notion of applying ideological or character tests to talent -- or prejudging projects based on who's associated with them -- is as close to the proverbial slippery slope as anyone should be eager to step.

Right-wing pundits already have a field day demonizing "Hollywood liberals," tarring even benign projects with that label. Some threw silly hissy fits over "Superman Returns" because the Man of Steel is said to stand for "truth, justice, all that stuff" -- ostensibly dropping "the American way" from his repertoire. Damn ungrateful Kryptonian illegal aliens.

Lost amid the din, of course, is the ideal of evaluating artistic works on their merits, as opposed to the increasingly common and distasteful practice of flatly dismissing any material from those with whom one disagrees.

The problem is that once you begin contemplating boycotts over boorish behavior and despicable opinions, where does it end? Good luck finding bankable casts for that next movie or TV show. Media moguls and sports tycoons, after all, have never exclusively employed choirboys, what with the historic link between big money and bigger excess.

Even before the inevitable apology tour, Gibson has cemented his status as a Leno punch line, and no one is required to work with or otherwise help further enrich him -- just as they needn't buy Dixie Chicks CDs, patronize Ludacris concerts or see Stone's next movie.

Clearly, it's naive to think such entertainment decisions can be disentangled from politics. Yet most Hollywood leaders' reticence to join in publicly pillorying Gibson might have something to do with this wider view, and the realization that allowing professional undertakings to become a referendum on personal lives is a slow conveyer belt to Hell -- one where the ox that's gored, in the long run, just might be their own.

BLOW HARD ... WITH A VENGEANCE: The sudden demand for talking heads to discuss all things Mel Gibson provided another reminder that there are no greater contributors to coarsening the national debate than those willing to spout off about any topic unburdened by research or facts.

As a case in point, consider L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative Media Research Center, who fired off a letter to the TV Critics Assn. last week demanding an apology to Fox News Channel chairman Roger Ailes. Bozell fumed that critics and reporters "walked out in protest of Fox's 'conservative spin'" during the net's July 24 press event.

For the record, I was there, and Bozell wasn't. Unfortunately, first-hand knowledge is hardly a prerequisite for those who specialize in shooting from the lip.

Certainly, the Ailes session was poorly attended. While many critics didn't hang around, however, there was nothing resembling an orchestrated "walkout," and even the "news accounts" (actually one, in the Miami Herald) on which Bozell predicated his comments didn't go so far as to say there was.

So unless Bozell can read minds, I'm mystified how he knows why people skipped out, given various explanations that are unrelated to politics, from deadline considerations to the fact that many press tour attendees focus on celebrity dish and care far more about gathering pearls of wisdom from Paula Abdul than Ailes or Rupert Murdoch.

Some journalists, too, are doubtless peeved over Fox News' aggressiveness off-air, which includes occasionally relegating scribes to the penalty box -- that is, freezing them out -- for deriding the channel. (Ailes obliquely referred to this by saying he'd speak to anyone unless "we're treated totally unfairly and people come in with a total bias" -- a rather subjective determination.)

Ailes is always good copy, and those who didn't come missed out. To assume that the empty seats represented an intentional and coordinated slight, though, is both unfair and imbalanced -- which, in pundit-speak, only qualifies Bozell for his close-up.