The great retreat was on Sept. 18 when Senator Lieberman appeared at a huge ($4.2 million) Hollywood fund-raiser. Everyone there wanted to know how Candidate Lieberman would now handle the Hollywood question. What Hollywood question? Here is the language by Senator Lieberman before he became a vice presidential candidate: Hollywood is "pushing the envelope of civility and morality in a way that drags the rest of the culture down."
How did he handle the question at the Hollywood fund-raiser? "I promise you this: We will never, never put the government in the position of telling you by law, through law, what to make. We will noodge you, but we will never become censors." (The question, of course, is not to tell Hollywood what to do, but what it can't do. Like, e.g., make snuff films.)
Last year Senator Lieberman's words were: "If they continue to market death and degradation to our children and pay no heed to the carnage, then one way or another the government will act." Is government supposed to act by not acting?
Mr. Cheney does not have to instruct the American public on exactly what needs to be done in what situation or how exactly the Federal Trade Commission report on the marketing practices of Hollywood is to be acknowledged/ignored/circumvented. The chilling antinomianism of some of the players at the Hollywood fund-raiser is suggested by the introductory speech of Larry David, the executive producer of "Seinfeld." The gentle speaker said of Governor Bush that he was a "smirking" lightweight who is "making it possible for a lot of idiots like myself to actually consider running for office." He proceeded (as a Jew, and surely to the intense embarrassment of Mr. Lieberman) to deride the Christian faith. ("Like Bush, I too found Christ in my 40s. He came into my room one night, and I said: 'What, no call? You just pop in?'")
The company Mr. Lieberman is keeping, and the abject surrender on the moral questions whose espousal so distinguished him in the past, are a solemn responsibility of Mr. Cheney to examine.