The American Spectator

Special Report

(Page 3 of 4)

br> American culture is like a mobius -- people, lifestyles, attitudes go away for a while, only to eventually return again upside down. Watch the passing scene long enough, and you'll see the lava lamp of social norms reverse itself, then reverse itself again. For the Webb legacy, the shift has been of the 180-degree polar variety, providing the kind of clarity and moral sledgehammer that Jack so favored.

Consider the big picture:

• His friend Ronnie did turn around the economy -- they stopped calling it Reaganomics the next year.

• The Soviets lost.

• After an eight-year "slip," America has begun the new century with a president committed to the kind of values that would make Sgt. Friday proud.

On the professional scene:

• Instead of simply riding the electromagnetic spectrum all the way to viewers in Alpha Centauri, a technology and infrastructure (cable channels, DVD's, etc.) emerged to preserve and distribute the Jack Webb corpus of work to the next generation. In addition to Dragnet, shows like Adam-12 now have a whole new body of fans.

• In 1987, Universal produced a campy, comedic Dragnet feature film -- but explicitly remained respectful of the Webb character and legacy.

• Currently, a brand new Dragnet television series is in production headed by Dick Wolf, the creator of Law and Order -- itself a police procedural whose lineage traces directly to the original show.

• Neo-Film Noir came back big time -- and those in the know acknowledge that this dark vision of postwar Los Angeles began with Dragnet. James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential and a tone setter in film noir, credits his receiving The Badge from his father as a birthday present at age eleven as one of the creatively seminal events in his life.

* * * * *

br> Moralists and scolds may point to Jack's lifestyle as being the cause of an early death at age 64. They could point to the Jack Webb Breakfast: a cup of coffee and a pack of L&M's (laudably displaying forty years of loyalty to his original radio sponsor, Liggett and Meyers). Or the Jack Webb Lunch: a shrimp cocktail and a Crown Royal.

I really don't know what stopped his heart from beating -- nor is it really anyone's business. But I will hazard a guess that, even though he displayed not a trace of self-pity, the 1982 zeitgeist generated a level of frustration, despondency, and anger that could be lethal to anyone. In fact, you could say that Jack Webb was the first victim of a cultural disease that did not yet have a name.

When scientists battle a new disease, clear-cut identification of the pathogen often puts them ninety percent closer to the cure. So it was with what we now know as "political correctness." A few years after Webb died, in the late eighties, two men who knew a great deal about the power of language control brought the concept to the national stage. First with their Second Thoughts movement, and then through books, periodicals, and public events, authors David Horowitz and Peter Collier were largely responsible for taking "politically correct" -- a Maoist term popularized by Angela Davis -- and turning it into an ironic pejorative.

The public "got it" -- and got it quickly. Americans are a fair-minded lot -- and once presented with the absurdities and hypocrisies of contemporary culture and its "leaders" -- were able to connect the dots which begin with informal speech codes and culminate in a suffocating leftist monopoly on academia, the media and the arts. Outrage quickly morphed to ridicule, as the nudities of countless emperors were exposed. In this new environment, another generation is now learning to appreciate the values and the art of Jack Webb -- the once and future avatar of anti-PC.

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