Nightmares of depravity.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Bob Dole's attacks on media - Column

Yes! Yes! Yes!" gushed Lisa Marie Presley in what journalistic giant Diane Sawyer billed as "the interview we've been waiting for." Presley and her husband, Michael Jackson, do "do it," and anyone who has doubts about their marriage, can, as Presley put it, "eat it." I trust your mind is finally at ease over this pressing issue.

Here's where Bob Dole's recent pronouncements on the media come in handy. Forcing millions of Americans to visualize this coupling surely must qualify as one of Dole's "nightmares of depravity." The depravity doesn't stop here, though. As Walter Goodman noted in a delightfully catty review in The New York Times, ABC news and its $8-million-dollar woman, under the guise of presenting a "news" magazine, simply turned over an entire hour of air time to the promotional department of Sony, which is reported to be spending $30 million to repair Jackson's image and flog his new, lackluster CD.

Prime Time Live delivered to Sony an audience of approximately 60 million, and Sawyer coolly served as PR agent for Sony's new, allegedly improved commodity. "You cannot ignore what he has achieved," she instructed her viewers. Connie Chung, having been canned from the CBS Nightly News for flirting too frequently with tabloid journalism, must have thought life a bit unfair. (By the way, have people forgotten how Dan Rather, in the 1980s, sported red suspenders and then sweater vests in an effort to improve ratings?)

But let's get back to Bob Dole, who, free marketeer that he is, would certainly bless the union of Sony and ABC (and never criticize a dishy former Nixon aide). Dole tried to persuade us that fellow Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's splattorama, True Lies, was a "family-friendly" film, while Natural Born Killers and most rap music are the aforementioned "nightmares of depravity" glutting the nation.

The cynicism of Dole's tirade was so bald and obvious it was embarrassing. He wants to repeal the ban on assault weapons, but keep guns and violence out of Oliver Stone's movies. He singled out Time-Warner, which even The Wall Street Journal noted is a major contributor to the Democratic Party, and spared fellow Republicans like Bruce Willis and Rupert Murdoch, whose profits from relentlessly violent fare are enormous.

He attacked gangsta rap, while every piece of legislation he is championing will make life for urban black folks more miserable and violent. He praised The Lion King and Forrest Gump, films that promote...