WI: Tipper Gore didn't found the Parents Music Resource Center

What if Tipper didn't bother making a fuss about music? How would this effect the music industry? How would this effect Al Gore's career?
 
I guess that back when music was still purchased in analog form, the items wouldn't have had the Explicit Content warnings on them?

Actually, I'm not even sure if those were a result of her campaign. I don't think they ever managed to get the "D for drugs", "O for occult" etc labels that they wanted, did they?

As for those hearings, apart from not having the YouTube videos of Frank Zappa, Dee Snyder, and John Denver's testimony, I don't see any long-term impact. And to the extent that it has any effect on Al Gore's career, nixing his wife's puritan crusade would probably be a plus: the Democrats by the early '90s were already shaping themselves up as the party of secularized, urban youth, and I can't imagine association with Tipper's anti-rock pre-occupations helped in that regard.

Counterpoint: I guess there might have been a FEW social-conservatives at the time who were still voting Democrat, especially among the soccer-mom faction, and would have appreciated the party's embracing Tipper via Al. These days, any Democrat jumping on board a comstockian bandwagon would be signing their own death-warrant.
 
I guess that back when music was still purchased in analog form, the items wouldn't have had the Explicit Content warnings on them?

Actually, I'm not even sure if those were a result of her campaign. I don't think they ever managed to get the "D for drugs", "O for occult" etc labels that they wanted, did they?

As for those hearings, apart from not having the YouTube videos of Frank Zappa, Dee Snyder, and John Denver's testimony, I don't see any long-term impact. And to the extent that it has any effect on Al Gore's career, nixing his wife's puritan crusade would probably be a plus: the Democrats by the early '90s were already shaping themselves up as the party of secularized, urban youth, and I can't imagine association with Tipper's anti-rock pre-occupations helped in that regard.

Counterpoint: I guess there might have been a FEW social-conservatives at the time who were still voting Democrat, especially among the soccer-mom faction, and would have appreciated the party's embracing Tipper via Al. These days, any Democrat jumping on board a comstockian bandwagon would be signing their own death-warrant.
I wonder if Gore would have performed better with young voters in 2000.
 
I wonder if Gore would have performed better with young voters in 2000.

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. IOTL, he made a point of subtly condemining Bill Clinton's sexual escapades, and some commentators argued that this might have alienated liberal young people, by appearing to align him with the Republican scolds. If that's true, lingering memories of the PMRC might have contributed to that perception.

Though with the Lewinsky affair, the GOP had done such a bang-up job of portraying themselves as a bunch of ranting theocrats, I think most liberal young people would have just held their nose and voted for whomever the Democrat was. Well, except for those who voted for Nader, though I don't think he got a lot of votes from people panicked about social conservativism. (He's actually kind of a prude himself, I've seen him on TV going on about pop-culture being too sexualized etc, and I've also heard him say that if Roe V. Wade gets overturned as a result of left-wing vote splitting, women in conservative states can just go to liberal states for abortions.)
 
Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. IOTL, he made a point of subtly condemining Bill Clinton's sexual escapades, and some commentators argued that this might have alienated liberal young people, by appearing to align him with the Republican scolds. If that's true, lingering memories of the PMRC might have contributed to that perception.

Though with the Lewinsky affair, the GOP had done such a bang-up job of portraying themselves as a bunch of ranting theocrats, I think most liberal young people would have just held their nose and voted for whomever the Democrat was. Well, except for those who voted the Nader, though I don't think he got a lot of votes from people panicked about social conservativism. (He's actually kind of a prude himself, I've seen him on TV going on about pop-culture being too sexualized etc, and I've also heard him say that if Roe V. Wade gets overturned as a result of left-wing vote splitting, women in conservative states can just go to liberal states for abortions.)
I was thinking that young voters alienated by Tipper stayed home or voted for Nader. Gore may have also failed to realize that people who vote because they want "morality" tend to be single-issue anti-abortion voters and therefore wouldn't vote for even the most uptight Democrat.
 
Was John Denver for or against Tipper Gore?

I only saw a bit of his testimony, but from what I could tell, against. He was complaining that people interpreted Rocky Mountain High as being about drugs, which seemed like it would be a point against labeling music as pro-drugs.
 
I only saw a bit of his testimony, but from what I could tell, against. He was complaining that people interpreted Rocky Mountain High as being about drugs, which seemed like it would be a point against labeling music as pro-drugs.

I can see that. With any censorship/warning/ratings system, there's risk of things being misclassified just through human error - and harmless stuff being unfairly restricted.
 
It's possible he does a bit better in 88. IOTL he had serious trouble as a result of it in fundraising in LA and California, and it jarred horribly with the kind of image he was working off, of him being a young boomer candidate. As a result he was mostly relying on IMPAC's money and became a pretty sectional candidate. I should say that I don't think it makes him the nominee, but if he clears up on Super Tuesday and clearly bests Jackson - most of the southern Jackson wins were very close - he might end up looking more like the effective runner up than IOTL. There might be more pressure and momentum as a result for him to jump into 92. So talk of the knock-on it had on 2000 might be a little moot ITTL.
 
I can see that. With any censorship/warning/ratings system, there's risk of things being misclassified just through human error - and harmless stuff being unfairly restricted.

And of course, you had classifications like "occult", which, if you know anything about the obsessions of Christian fundamentalists, can include everything from outright Satanism to newspaper horoscopes. (I'm being charitable and assuming that, by the late 80s, mainstream fundies were politically saavy enough not to try and get Ave Maria branded as occultic.)
 
It's possible he does a bit better in 88. IOTL he had serious trouble as a result of it in fundraising in LA and California, and it jarred horribly with the kind of image he was working off, of him being a young boomer candidate. As a result he was mostly relying on IMPAC's money and became a pretty sectional candidate. I should say that I don't think it makes him the nominee, but if he clears up on Super Tuesday and clearly bests Jackson - most of the southern Jackson wins were very close - he might end up looking more like the effective runner up than IOTL. There might be more pressure and momentum as a result for him to jump into 92. So talk of the knock-on it had on 2000 might be a little moot ITTL.

One thing I remember from the TV hearings is Frank Zappa(I think) implying that the Gores' campaign against rock music was a pander to the country music industry, headquartered in Gore's home state, of course. He did win Tennessee in the '88 primaries, though that probably had more to do with his being the local-boy candidate.
 
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