The New, Green Gorby

Who says Hollywood has run out of heroes? Certainly no one who has witnessed the bowing and scraping going on as America's entertainment-industry leaders prepare to roll out the red carpet for an environmental prophet -- the man they tout as best able to cope with the world crisis as we near the dawn of a new millennium. Who is this latest guru? Is it Vice President Al Gore? The Dalai Lama? Ted Turner? Not even close. The man with the plan is none other than ex-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. That's right, the former Soviet dictator, the scourge of Afghanistan, the bane of Chernobyl, is coming to Tinseltown to address the Environmental Media Awards dinner this fall, and his coming is being hailed and heralded like that of a conquering savior. Gorbachev has been reborn as president of the Green Cross International, a year-old global eco-lobby that promises to lead us hapless mortals -- whether we like it or not -- into the promised land of milk, honey and solar power. So what does he have to say to Hollywood? Well, oddly enough, Comrade Gorbachev and the heads of all the major American networks and movie studios share more than a few common goals. The EMA, for instance, a 5-year-old organization of everybody who is anybody in the industry, is dedicated to incorporating environmental themes in popular programming -- from television to feature films to MTV videos. EMA's founder, television producer Norman Lear, learned a long time ago that the best way to change the world is to change the way people think without them even realizing it. How? Through the use of slick, sneaky propaganda designed to change people's values and to create new instincts in people. You see, Lear and his friends have systematically studied the world's problems at Harvard, Yale and Stanford. They know what is wrong. And even though they spend their time making television sitcoms, they know how to fix things. Lear, in fact, says it is the sacred duty of the media to "help Americans understand changes needed in behavior and lifestyles."And now America's paternalistic Hollywood know-it-alls may have found someone who can rival even them when it comes to promoting utopian sociopolitical ideals. At the EMA affair, Gorbachev is expected to discuss his organization's call for a shift in values and lifestyles -- Americans' values and lifestyles, of course. "If anyone can change the way people think, Mikhail Gorbachev can do it," said Andy Goodman, EMA's president. "He has been going around the globe speaking about the environment and the need for personal values changes. We're excited to bring that message to Hollywood."And it will not just be Hollywood hearing Gorbachev's message. For the first time, this year's awards program will be aired on TBS about a week after the October 17 event. Now, nit-pickers might ask, on what moral authority does Gorbachev preach to Americans? After all, while Gorby sounds like an eco-sensitive granola-cruncher, this is the same lifelong Leninist who presided over perhaps the most environmentally irresponsible nation in world history. Even Gorbachev now acknowledges that the Soviet Union, on his watch, was something of an eco-nightmareland. Nuclear waste in massive amounts was dumped into the open seas, hydroelectric dams turned the most cultivable lands into vast lake beds, species of fish that provided a major source of food were destroyed by timber clear-cutting. And then there was Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history, and Gorbachev was the author of the international cover-up.But, again, that would be quibbling. Gorbachev has changed, right? He is no longer the man he was -- the KGB-backed communist apparatchik who, even as late as 1990, had banned all independent media activity in the Soviet Union. No, that man has been transformed, metamorphosed and resurrected. "The idea of socialism lives on," he wrote in his very first newspaper column distributed in the United States and worldwide in 1992, "and it is my feeling that the quest -- the desire to experiment and to find a new form for putting the socialist idea into practice -- is ongoing."The dream lives on indeed.And now Mr. Socialism is turning to Hollywood to help him find that "new form." The red hammers and sickles are gone. Tanks are out. Barbed wire is pass?. You can bet that when tyranny is revisited in the 1990s, it will be all dressed up in green and made downright appealing with tasteful sound bites, moving imagery, great lighting and original scoring. Joseph Farah is editor of Inside California, a state political newsletter, and Dispatches, a national biweekly media and cultural watchdog publication. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.