WHEN Sherri Shepherd and her cohorts on ABC's "The View" start screaming at one another about the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical-left group that bombed the Pentagon, it appears as if something strange has leaked into the American water supply.
Once upon a time, except for the occasional drive-by comment during acceptance speeches at the Emmys or the odd plug for a pet cause, TV entertainers would seldom be heard voicing explicit political opinion over the airwaves. Now, you can't get on-air talent to button up about the overheated presidential race.
Robert Schmuhl, a Notre Dame professor who's written widely on politics and the media, points out that in the past, politicians would use entertainment shows more or less as a photo op -- for example, Bill Clinton trying to connect with young voters by playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall's show in 1992.
"This year, it is much more pronounced," Schmuhl said. "The interest in the campaign is probably the driving force behind it. The contrasts are so sharp, the characters are so vivid, that all of this lends itself to appearing on entertainment as well as public affairs programming."
Another driving force, of course, is the bottom line. Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" have proved there's gold in political lampoons. Producers of "The View" made a conscious and widely reported decision to go political this season, and since then, ratings have gone up. In a divided America, partisanship has become another spectator sport.
Yet as hard as it may be to believe, this kind of civic opinion-mongering was not tolerated on entertainment programs until fairly recently. The Fairness Doctrine mandated by the Federal Communications Commission required broadcasters to offer equitable and balanced viewpoints on controversial issues. The policy may have sounded reasonable in the abstract, but in practice, it proved an enormous pain in the rear end. As a result, most programming executives took the path of least resistance and made sure political discussion stayed strictly inside the bounds of news and public-affairs programs. Getting political was by no means illegal, but it was frowned upon.
Recall that Tommy Smothers -- who picked up a special award at last month's Emmy telecast -- and his brother Dick famously got their popular variety program axed by CBS in 1969 after battling the censors over tart sketches on the Vietnam War and other political topics.
