For pursuing "profit above principle" and "polluting our culture" with gratuitous prime time sex and violence, Rupert Murdoch has been awarded the Silver Sewer by former Education Secretary William Bennett and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
Bennett and Lieberman singled out three Fox Network sitcoms - Get Real, Action, and Manchester Prep - and the drama series When Animals Attack, the latter showing some very graphic scenes of humans being attacked and mauled by animals.
It's the third time Bennett and Lieberman have handed out their dubious award, according to Conservative News Service; the prior winners were CBS for producing the Howard Stern television show and Seagram's for producing The Jerry Springer Show.
Bennett told the news service Murdoch "should be remembered as the man who moved more and more cultural rot into the American mainstream." Lieberman says American cultural pollution turned for the worse when the Fox network debuted 12 years ago with Married…with Children as one of its original flagship shows, when the network aired only on Sunday nights.
However, Lieberman says that memorably raunchy sitcom actually seems tame now, compared to Fox network fare since, such as Melrose Place, which the senator calls "the soft porn soap".
"A single re-run episode of I Love Lucy or (The) Burns and Allen (Show) has more real comedy and quality than a whole season of Fox sitcoms," Lieberman told CNS.
And he added the Senate will soon convene a special subcommittee to address "the cultural meltdown in the entertainment industry," CNS says.
Bennett told CNS that he and Lieberman are working with industry artists and executives, from actor William Baldwin to MPAA chairman Jack Valenti, to clean it up, saying he and Lieberman don't advocate censorship but want the industry to monitor itself.
