If this were the election of 1789, the cultural elite would be easy to spot. They’d be the folks who had gathered in Philadelphia earlier to produce a federal constitution. But according to the vice president, today’s cultural elite is to be found in “newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges across America.” From their privileged platforms, he warns, they spew laughter and scorn on those who uphold “our country’s enduring, basic moral values.” Says Lisa Schiffren, the Quayle staffer who wrote his famous “Murphy Brown” speech: “We’re talking about those who by self-selection and ambition run the institutions of popular culture-in contrast to a traditional cultural elite defined by erudition, wisdom and taste.”

Trashing the purveyors of popular culture may seem like a no-lose proposition for Quayle, since their products are widely despised, even sometimes (privately) by the purveyors themselves. Many parents are appalled by the anything-goes sexuality and violence that constitutes popular entertainment in this country, even though they may watch it themselves. “The working-class families I’ve visited over the last 20 years,” says Robert Coles, author of classic studies of American life, “are for what Quayle is calling family values, even if the reality of their own homes doesn’t always live up to those values.”

But Quayle wasn’t directing his remarks just at the shows; he was talking about individuals, the Hollywood-New York crowd of writers, artists, producers and stars (except, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger), and their fellow travelers in places like Boston and San Francisco. Is there a world view that this “cultural elite” shares? Quayle’s aides are known to have consulted a 1991 study by Robert Lichter, Linda Lichter and man, co-directors of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. The center found that on issues of sexual morality, abortion and religion, the people at the top in television and movie-making were far more liberal than the rest of the country (box). The news-media elite, a separate study showed, were not far behind.

But despite what Quayle seems to want people to think, this cluster of beliefs did not come about through either sheer perversity or conspiracy. Some scholars trace it to a convergence of values among men and women of achievement that sets them apart from the working class. “In order to get where they are, they have to give up strong ties to people, places and traditions,” argues Mary Ann Glendon, a professor at Harvard Law School. " They are geographically mobile technocrats who get their prestige, power and satisfaction from work. They tend to mistrust the judgment of ordinary people." Among these elites, there is a growing commitment to what some observers call “lifestyle liberalism.” “At the core of their world view is personal autonomy and self-creation,” says political scientist William Galston of the University of Maryland, who is also a domestic-policy adviser to Gov. Bill Clinton. “Traditional morality has no prima facie authority [for them] because it has to be tested against the principle of individual autonomy.”

As a whole library of scholarly books and essays attest, there is a genuine culture war going on in American society-in education, the arts, religion, law, politics-and the entertainment media are only its most visible battleground. At the heart of that war are competing moral visions of what the Founding Fathers meant by “ordered liberty”: how to balance individual rights with the social responsibilities on which families and communities depend. It is doubtful whether politics alone can bring about a consensus on so fundamental an issue, especially in the heat of a presidential campaign. But it is certain that television alone-or even in combination with magazines and movies-is not to blame for the decline in family values. Symptom it may be of deeper cultural confusions and contradictions. But as even Quayle must know, it is not the cause.

Hollywood really is different from the rest of the country. IRA survey of 104 top television writers and executives found that their attitudes toward moral and religious questions aren’t shared by their audience.

Hollywood 49%

Everyone else 85%

Hollywood 45%

Everyone else 4%

Hollywood 20%

Everyone else 76%

Hollywood 97%

Everyone else 59%

SOURCE: THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS