What liberal leadership? Danny Goldberg sizes up the Democrats BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Although it’s been said that music and politics don’t mix, they are inseparable. Music reflects the spirit and tone of a culture on every level, whether in the direct commentary of songwriters from Joe Hill to Joe Strummer or in its sounds. There was no better mirror of the changing pace of America in the ’50s than the rhythms of early rock. Today, electronica is the perfect refuge for a new generation of numbed and alienated youth.

Danny Goldberg understands connections like these, having spent most of his life straddling the worlds of music and politics. Starting in the ’60s, he blazed a career path from fan to publicist, manager, producer, and record-label chief. Today, he is the CEO of Artemis Records, a large independent label whose roster ranges from the metal outfit Kittie to troubadour Steve Earle to the Pretenders. Along the way, his knowledge of and passion for music has been equaled by his faith in the righteousness of liberal causes.

That’s " liberal " in the sense of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Goldberg’s belief in the American ideal of employment, education, health care, and economic justice and equality for all citizens is at the root of the crusade that has paralleled and intersected with his business achievements. And he tells the story of that crusade in Dispatches from the Culture Wars, which recounts his role in such important events as the 1980 No Nukes concert and film and the Senate subcommittee hearings on rating recordings sparked by Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center as well as his service on behalf of freedom as an executive in the American Civil Liberties Union.

At its core, though, Dispatches is a chronicle of how the Democratic Party went wrong, allowing the country to go farther and farther right. Goldberg’s wealth, influence, and activism have given him access to those who walk the corridors of power. He writes that since the 1980s, there’s been a crisis in leadership that has cost the Democratic Party its soul, poisoned its once crusading heart, and forfeited the youth vote. It’s the latter happenstance that provides the book’s subtitle, which is borrowed from a lyric by one of Goldberg’s former management clients, Kurt Cobain.

Since the Reagan Administration, Goldberg argues, Democrats have stiffened up. Seeing the populist embrace voters have given conservatives like Reagan and the Bushes, Democratic leaders like Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and Joseph Lieberman have distanced themselves from the ideas and ideals of the 1960s and become what Goldberg calls " liberal snobs. " Unlike Jimmy Carter, whose political career was ignited in part by his relationship to the Allman Bros., and Bill Clinton, who used MTV and his saxophone to win youth votes, front-runners like Dukakis, Gore, and Lieberman have alienated themselves from popular culture.

Both Gore and Lieberman have played prominent roles in vilifying free expression in film, music, and video games and on the Internet. Despite their claptrap to the contrary, they have sought to censor these modes of artistic expression, or to prevent teenagers — the population preoccupied with movies, CDs, and video games — from getting access to them. These politicians are screwing with the pop-culture passions and modes of expression of the very people whose votes they need to turn the Republican tide. With youth, Goldberg writes, come new ideas and new energy — essential lest the party and the country become stagnant, inflexible, and conservative.

Goldberg’s privileged close-up view of Gore and Lieberman allows us to see them at their most publicly unguarded. Through his encounters with Gore over the decades, Goldberg portrays the former vice-president as arrogant, defensive, inflexible, and quite likely a petty liar. Lieberman in one encounter bares his teeth during a meeting with Goldberg and other entertainment-industry executives. He’ll disguise his threats of censorship as a last-ditch solution to the cultural ills he ascribes to popular arts; then in the next day’s newspapers, the senator’s spin doctors will turn the event into the heroic delivery of an ultimatum to an industry uncontrolled in its marketing of violence and other excesses.

For most of the book, Goldberg presents us with events and impressions that underline his points. But for Lieberman, he offers an assessment of character that is worth considering as 2004 approaches. " I would never under any circumstances support or vote for a ticket with Joe Lieberman on it. Not only is he one of the most conservative Democrats with a national profile, but his self-righteousness about religion and venom toward popular culture would make him a serious threat to a free and intellectually diverse American society if he were to gain more power. "