HAVE THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES GONE TO POT?

In the words of Jed Clampett, whoa doagies! Insight has learned that the
cable networks Nick at Nite and TV Land have censored jokes and puns from
reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies because they think that some mild
references to marijuana on the show are inappropriate for children.

Now you might think the humor of the Beverly Hillbillies, especially
compared with that of more modern sitcoms aired on the cable networks, is
as clean as Elly May's dress after it's been washed with Granny's lye soap.
Nick at Nite airs All in the Family, Coach and Cheers and is planning to
air the raunchy 1990s series Roseanne next fall. Adult situations from
profanity to premartial sex don't seem to be edited from those shows. But
officials at Nick at Nite and TV Land defend their decision to censor the
Hillbillies' mild marijuana references.

"There were drug references, and kids would be watching," Paul Ward, the
sister networks' senior vice president for communications, tells Insight.
"The show was edited, because a lot of viewers were kids. We have a
responsibility as programmers, and part of that responsibility is telling
kids that recreational drug use is not okay."

But it's not like the Clampetts ever puffed on a joint or said anything to
glorify drug use. The references edited from at least three episodes were
simply puns and wordplays about the hippie culture of the late 1960s:

In a 1968 episode where Granny was away and the Clampetts hired an Italian
cook, Jethro called the marinara sauce "marijuana sauce."

In 1967, when Granny was with a crowd of hippies at Los Angeles' Griffith
Park, she told a police officer she needed to find "a little pot." She
meant a pot to cook in, but the joke was that the policeman misunderstood.

And in 1969, a sheriff's deputy said that Elly May's bear, which was
dressed like a hippie, "probably smokes pot."

These jokes got by CBS network censors in the late 1960s and survived many
rounds of syndicated reruns until Nick at Nite acquired the show in 2000.
It was only then that these references were censored. "I think that the
drug culture was much more prevalent and accepted in the 1960s than it is
now," Ward explains to Insight. "I think we're living in a time when even
casual drug references are considered to be somewhat harmful. Even if it is
a joke, if you can avoid it as a programmer, you might want to go that route."

The networks, particularly TV Land, market themselves to TV purists, and
this action has irked some Hillbillies aficionados.

Commenting on some of the missing jokes, a poster on the Website,
JumpTheShark.com, exclaimed, "Are we becoming that paranoid and politically
correct? Leave the shows alone!"

Max Baer, who portrayed Jethro on the series and has plans to open Beverly
Hillbillies theme casinos, expressed surprise to Insight that the cable
networks, which air programs that deal with much more mature subject matter
than the Beverly Hillbillies, would bother to eliminate such mild pot
references from the show. "They certainly have had a lot of things with
Archie Bunker and All in the Family and shows that were a lot more
progressive than the Beverly Hillbillies ever were, with respect to race as
well as drugs and everything else," Baer tells Insight.

He also wonders why the networks would omit references that got by censors
years ago. "The show went on the air and has been running in reruns for 40
years, and they're taking them [the pot jokes] off now?" Baer asks. "It
would be like re-editing Groucho Marx's shows from the 1930s, because of
some of the double entendres that he used to use."

Television writer Steve Cox calls the decision "bizarre" and says that Nick
at Nite and TV Land shouldn't mess around with the classic scripts of the
show. "It's just amazing that this is what we've come to," Cox, author of
the forthcoming book, The Beverly Hillbillies: A 40th Anniversary Wing
Ding, tells Insight. "It's kind of odd that they would go in there and try
to protect people from just wordplays about marijuana. It's like ripping
pages out of Mark Twain's books."

Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says the actions by
Nick at Nite and TV Land are further evidence of a new paranoia by
television programmers about any mention of drug use. "Hollywood in
present-day society is as hung up about drugs as previous generations were
about sex," Gieringer tells Insight. He notes that in 2000, it was revealed
that the Clinton administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy
was reviewing scripts of broadcast networks' TV shows and paying networks
for antidrug messages.

Ward says that to his knowledge, Nick at Nite and TV Land have never been
paid or pressured by the government to omit drug references from TV shows.
He says that TV Land still airs the 1976 episode of Barney Miller in which
the characters eat marijuana brownies. He said the reason the jokes were
taken out of the Beverly Hillbillies is that they originally aired at 9
p.m. Eastern time on Nick at Nite. Since the network broadcasts children's
programming as Nickelodeon during the day, it was assumed that many
children still would be watching in the evening. He says Nick at Nite has
not decided whether to show the episode of Roseanne in which the characters
get stoned when the network begins broadcasting reruns of the series next fall.

Although the Beverly Hillbillies, like Barney Miller, now is broadcast only
on TV Land, which shows reruns all day with no children's programming, Ward
says there are no plans to put the pot references back in. He says that to
restore the jokes now, after they already have been cut, might send the
message that the networks advocate drug use. "A lot of money, time and
effort would have to be spent," he says. "It would seem to be a long way to
go just to advocate drug references."

Baer calls the cable networks' action hypocritical, pointing out that their
parent company, Viacom, also owns MTV, which broadcasts explicit content
for kids to see all day. "It's sort of ridiculous to take all those
insignificant words out of the Hillbillies, yet have all this hate rap on
MTV," he says. "MTV uses language that goes beyond references or
inferences. They talk about everything there: from killing to drugs to
everything else. This is really kind of reaching." Baer speculates the
company might be doing this so it can claim it is doing something
responsible if the government ever complains about the content of other
Nick at Nite programs or shows on Viacom's other networks.

"I would hasten to say that I don't believe that the Beverly Hillbillies
have ever induced anybody to do drugs," Baer remarks. "If there has been, I
would like them to point that person out to me. It could have been Bill
Clinton, but he's the only one I can think of."