Whipping Up Lather Over the Burger Ad

Nature provides us with many tools for gauging the passage of time, such as crocuses to herald the arrival of spring and the harvest moon to proclaim the autumnal equinox.

Then there’s the appearance of L. Brent Bozell III on every TV news program in creation, which marks the more-or-less annual arrival of the season for pontificating about indecency on TV.

The latest Bozell-a-thon was provoked by a commercial promoting a cheeseburger sold by Carl’s Jr. restaurants, featuring the heiress-actress-whatever Paris Hilton.

The ad debuted about a week ago, and the sight of Hilton in a swimsuit soaping up a luxury automobile without actually using her hands (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) promptly drove Bozell bats. He appeared all over the TV dial to decry its airing during hours when children might be watching. On the “Today” show, he called it “a quantum leap down this pike where we try to scrape the bottom of the barrel,” a triple-masted mixed metaphor that, grammatically speaking, would itself be regarded by most schoolteachers as scraping the bottom of the barrel.

We can stipulate that the commercial marks a new high (or low) in televised crassness. But what’s really interesting is the spotlight it shines on the symbiotic relationships connecting all the players in the manufactured outrage industry.

First Bozell, a longtime conservative pundit who launched the Parents Television Council as a blue-nosed media watchdog in 1995, apparently having realized that sex on television was a fail-safe issue through which to promote a broader ideological agenda. Here’s how he began a recent column ostensibly devoted to the low morals of the cable show “Sex and the City”:

“They once called women the ‘fairer sex,’ the civilizers of men, the paragons of reticence and manners. Then along came feminism.... “

Bozell says the Los Angeles-based PTC, which purports to have 1 million members nationwide, is concerned not with ideology but with documenting a deterioration in broadcast morals that is provoking nationwide indignation.

One might question how much of this indignation really exists. There’s evidence that it’s largely produced by, well, the PTC. According to Federal Communications Commission statistics reported last December by the trade publication MediaWeek, more than 99% of all indecency complaints to the agency in 2003 and 2004 were generated by the organization, whose website carries a form allowing visitors to fire off a gripe to the FCC with a few mouse clicks.

Bozell says his figures indicate that the PTC was responsible for only 56.4% of the complaints in 2003 and 21% the following year. Still, if the PTC has only 1 million members, even those figures cast doubt on any suggestion that the FCC is hearing a broad-based outcry.

The second group of participants in the morality game is the news media, whose members are enablers of organizations that thrive on a public impression that society is going to hell. Advocacy groups stir up controversies like l’affaire Hilton, and then feed off the publicity obligingly contributed by the Katies and Dianes of morning television. (“Has Paris Hilton finally gone too far? The commercial that has everyone talking, after this break!”)

Indeed, it’s certain that most Americans have seen the Paris Hilton ad only via TV programs reporting on Bozell’s complaint. How can we know this? Because as a paid advertisement, the spot has been shown only on the West Coast, Carl’s Jr. being a regional chain. (Its east-of-the-Rockies corporate sister, Hardee’s, won’t launch the Paris Hilton ad in its own market for another month.)

TV news directors understand the power of combining raunchy material with denunciations of same, as does Bozell himself: Among the seamiest video clips I’ve ever seen on the Web are two sequences from “Sex and the City” posted, in full-motion video, on the PTC website. Bozell points out that the site warns viewers about their inappropriate content, and I, for one, am grateful -- I might not have clicked on them at all had they not been labeled with the words “Graphic Content” and the helpful captions “Rape Fantasy” and “Whipped Cream Sex,” which certainly enabled me to make an informed decision about which one to view first.

The third participant in the roundelay of indecent exposure is the sponsor. Although it was founded by the devout Catholic Carl N. Karcher, who used to open corporate meetings by leading his executives in prayer, Carl’s Jr. has been marketing hamburgers through suggestive commercials for a decade.

That’s the period in which the company identified its core market as 18-to-34-year-old men. Well, more than its core market; considering that the burger in the new commercial is a 1,030-calorie cholesterol bomb, they’re probably the only human beings who can consume the thing without perishing on the spot.

Executives of Carl’s Jr.’s parent, Carpinteria, Calif.-based CKE Restaurants Inc., have reacted to the controversy with what can only be described as flagrant defiance. Their attitude seems to be, We meant to be provocative; consider yourself provoked. As CKE Chief Executive Andy Puzder was quoted, “This is an attempt to sell hamburgers. Get a grip.”

Yet we shouldn’t overlook some of the truly scary things about the Carl’s campaign. Yes, it’s inappropriately sexual for the time period in which it’s been running, before 9 p.m. on broadcast and basic cable. Yes, it bespeaks a troubling anything-for-money approach to commerce.

On the other hand, given the normal arc of fame in today’s world, there’s reason for hope buried within the observation by the commercial’s director posted on the Carl’s Jr. website that “Paris is one of the biggest celebrities in the world, right now.” We can all breathe a sigh of relief: She’s about to be over.

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at

latimes.com/hiltzik.