Last summer, when journalist John Leo had dinner with some friends in the Hamptons, the talk turned to which corporation was doing the most to debase and degrade American culture. The winner, hands down, was Time Warner.
Leo gathered evidence, particularly about offensive music, and delivered his indictment in March in his U.S. News & World Report column. "Like a junkie quivering toward a fix," he wrote, "Time Warner simply can't resist cashing in on the amoral singers who work tirelessly to tear the culture apart, glorifying brutality, violence and the most hateful attitudes toward women."
The next day he got a call from William J. Bennett, the former education secretary. "I was reading it like Joe Citizen and I couldn't believe it," Bennett said yesterday. "I'm an old rock-and-roller, played in bands. But when I read these lyrics I was outraged."
That conversation led to a public campaign against Time Warner, a confrontation at its annual meeting and, on Wednesday, a stinging attack by Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) that has put the company at the center of the presidential campaign and the nation's ongoing culture wars.
"Time Warner is our leading cultural polluter," said Leo, a former Time editor. "No one is in favor of censorship, but this is a matter of corporate responsibility."
Some journalists at Time Warner, whose music division is a key profit center, are equally appalled. "Most people here say this is just about making a buck," one Time magazine staffer said. "They're ashamed of it."
But Michael Fuchs, chairman of Time Warner Music Group, accused Dole of politicizing the issue through "overheated rhetoric." He said that offfensive lyrics, by past and present Time Warner artists, are "the price you pay for freedom of expression."
Whether or not Time Warner is engaged in the "marketing of evil," as Dole put it in his Hollywood speech, the news and entertainment conglomerate has abruptly become this year's "Murphy Brown," under attack by a national politician for undermining moral virtue.
"I have mixed feelings about it," Bennett said. "It gives our critics a bluc to say this is all about politics. The good part is it does raise the profile of the issue."
Bennett is ratcheting up his campaign by sending letters to Time Warner board members -- including opera diva Beverly Sills -- citing the "vulgar" and "truly offensive" lyrics of the heavy metal group Nine Inch Nails:
"I am a big man (yes I am). And I have a big gun. Got me a big old [expletive] and I, I like to have fun. Held against your forehead, I'll make you suck it. Maybe I'll put a hole in your head... I can reduce you if I want. I can devour. I'm hard as [expletive] steel and I've got the power.... Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. I'm going to come all over you.... me and my [expletive] gun, me and my [expletive] gun."
Bennett said the directors needed to see the unexpurgated version and urged newspapers to publish the lyrics.
Dole, for his part, assailed such films as "Natural Born Killers" and "True Romance" and such groups as Cannibal Corpse, Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew, although his staff acknowledged he had not seen the films or heard the music. His remarks sparked an angry counterattack from some in the film and music industries.
"Nine Inch Nails is a Grammy Award-winning, critically acclaimed artist who millions of people love," said Danny Goldberg, chairman of Warner Bros. Records. "Why should a corporation listen to a bunch of middle-aged people who don't like the music and don't listen to it, and ignore the people who do love it and who do buy it? When you were a teenager, did 50-year-old people like the same music you liked?"
"It is the height of hypocrisy for Senator Dole, who wants to repeal the assault weapons ban, to blame Hollywood for the violence in our society," said Oliver Stone, director of "Natural Born Killers." "Hollywood did not create the problem of violence in America."
Director Clive Barker, whose films include the "Hellraiser" series, said: "I'm not going to defend some piece of sleazy, scummy entertainment that's just done to make money. But if an artist wants to deal with violence or sexuality or images of darkness and horror, those are legitimate subjects for artists."
Timothy White, editor in chief of Billboard, said that while his music industry magazine has denounced some of the records, "for a politician to come along and start to criticize these things and admit he hasn't watched or heard them is fundamentally dishonest." White said the public is "disgusted and ill-served by opportunistic politicians mouthing off about something they know nothing about."
For Time Warner, the dilemma is an increasingly familiar one. It was Time Warner that was behind the rap group 2 Live Crew, whose 1990 conviction for obscene lyrics was overturned on appeal. It was Time Warner that produced the rapper Ice-T, whose song "Cop Killer" sparked a furious protest in 1992. It was Time Warner that published Madonna's sexually explicit pictorial book, "Sex." It was Time Warner that distributed "The Jenny Jones Show," which came under fire when a guest was charged with shooting a homosexual admirer with whom he was confronted on the program.
The stakes are considerable. Time Warner's top-selling music division holds about 25 percent of a $12 billion domestic market. Its labels include the flagship Warner Bros. as well as Atlantic and Elektra. What's more, music provided $4 billion of Time Warner's $16 billion in revenues last year.
A high-ranking Time Warner executive said the company has become an easy target because it is the only major American-owned record company.
"It troubles us to see this kind of personal attack on Time Warner," Fuchs said. "We've become fair game." But he added: "I do believe there is some gratuitous violence. I do believe it is an issue that has to be looked at."
The issue is hardly a new one. Under pressure from Congress, the public and a group founded by Tipper Gore, now the wife of the vice president, the record industry in 1985 adopted a voluntary labeling system for records with potentially offensive lyrics.
After Bennett read the U.S. News column, which also cited criticism from C. DeLores Tucker, head of the National Political Congress of Black Women, he joined forces with her. The two made a television ad assailing Time Warner for promoting "music that celebrates the rape, torture and murder of women." And Tucker confronted Gerald M. Levin, the company chairman, and other top executives at the annual stockholders' meeting in New York two weeks ago.
Tucker asked why Time Warner had paid $100 million to double its stake in Interscope Records, which handles the rap label Death Row Records and singer Tupac Shakur.
Levin told the shareholders he has asked company officials to develop "standards" for handling controversial music. But that did not satisfy Bennett and Tucker, who met privately after the session with Levin and Fuchs.
Bennett, author of the best-selling "The Book of Virtues," said he asked the executives "whether there was anything so low, so bad that you will not sell it." The response was a long silence. When Bennett used the word "baloney," Levin got up and walked out.
Dole joined the criticism that day, saying that "Time Warner is now on the cutting edge of the misogyny business." But his remarks received little attention.
Still, the media reaction was starting to build. Rush Limbaugh, a friend of Bennett's, criticized Time Warner on his radio show.
At Time, which is preparing a story on the controversy, it is one more reminder of the debt-laden 1989 merger between the magazine company that Henry Luce founded and an entertainment empire that stretches from Home Box Office and "ER" to Batman and Bugs Bunny. Staffers say their efforts to cover Time Warner television, films and music fairly are invariably viewed with suspicion.
Norman Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s editor in chief, "is not going to be bending to some yo-yo at the music group he's probably never met, but people out there probably think there's pressure," said one Time Inc. executive.
The view is very different from the music division, where Goldberg accuses Dole of pandering to conservative Christian voters. "Why is it okay for others to write about [sex and violence], but a young black man from the ghetto can't sing about it?" he asked.
But Bennett, and now Dole, seem to have struck a nerve. Bennett points to such rap lyrics as those of the Geto Boys, another Time Warner artist: "Her body's beautiful, so I'm thinkin' rape ... Grabbed the bitch by the mouth, drug her back in, slam her down on the couch. Whipped out my knife, said, 'If you scream I'm cuttin' ... She begged in a low voice, 'Please don't kill me.' I slit her throat and watched her shake like on TV."
Bennett has become a less-than-popular figure at what some critics are called "Slime Warner." He recently agreed to repeated requests from Stuart Arnold, publisher of Time Inc.'s Fortune, to speak at a fall conference at which the magazine will unveil its annual Fortune 500 rankings. Last week the invitation was withdrawn.
"It just sort of seemed like it would be uncomfortable for him to be speaking at the conference," said Time Inc. spokesman Peter Costiglio.