Being Crude for Fun and Profit : Syndicated Columnist Reaps Reward of Controversy Surrounding ‘Joe Bob Briggs’

What if a movie critic went berserk?

Dallas Times Herald columnist John Bloom contemplated the question in 1982, when he and a group of fellow writers made up their minds to find the elusive Unwritten Feature.

Bloom’s scenario went something like this: What if New York Times critic Vincent Canby (“the most boring writer in the universe” in Bloom’s estimation) woke up one morning and, instead of liking “Gandhi,” found himself with a new appreciation for films with less, um, lofty ambitions--such as “Dr. Butcher, M.D.” and “Gas Pump Girls”?

Thus did Bloom beget Joe Bob Briggs, the redneck drive-in movie critic who trolls the backwaters of B-moviedom in search of the three B’s--blood, breasts and beasts.

It started as something of a lark, but “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In” has managed to survive 7 years, while angering a wide range of social and special-interest groups including feminists, animal rights activists, fundamentalists and even drive-in theater owners (who fear that Joe Bob damages the family image they want to project).

A 1985 parody of the song “We Are the World” gained Joe Bob a particular measure of notoriety when, after a protest by black community leaders, the column was dropped by the Times Herald and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Bloom, 35, came to Costa Mesa on Saturday to speak to an audience of writers and editors at a symposium sponsored by the Orange County Press Club. Dressed more like a Texas gentleman--black hat, polished boots, silver-tipped collar, bolo tie--than a redneck, Bloom offered his defense of satire as a legitimate form of journalism.

He said that satire, a once-favored journalistic medium, has been largely abandoned by newspapers and that most humor writing today falls into the Andy Rooney “Whatever-happens-to-those-socks-that-get-lost-in-the-dryer” school.

“People don’t do this anymore,” Bloom said Saturday. “You’re not supposed to have fun at a newspaper.”

He confessed no regrets about occasionally tweaking some sensibilities in his column--in fact, he revels in it. His favorite targets include “anybody whose cause is so self-righteous that it can’t be made fun of.”

Bloom likened his approach to plunking targets one by one from a machine gun turret. “When one screams,” he said, “I hit it 20 more times. . . . You discover the sacred cows that way.”

Thus, when representatives of the National Organization for Women protested his review of a chain-saw flick called “Pieces,” he came up with his much-repeated disclaimer: “I’m against the random mutilation and torture of women, unless it’s necessary to the plot.”

Things came to a head when Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price took offense at Bloom’s parody of “We Are the World,” titled “We Are the Weird.” (Sample lines: “We are the weird, We are the starvin’, We are the scum of the filthy earth, So let’s start scarfin’.”)

Bloom said Saturday that had he known all the fuss it would raise, “I would have spent more than 20 minutes writing it.” He wrote the parody because he hated the original mega-hit charity record, which raised money for Ethiopian famine relief. “I was sick of it,” he said Saturday. “It wasn’t a good song. It was never a good song. It didn’t even make any sense.”

His column ran on a Friday. Price, a black community leader in Dallas with a Sunday radio show, organized a protest. The Times Herald printed a front-page apology on Monday, and on Tuesday the paper’s editor announced during a heated meeting with protesters that the column would be canceled.

Things looked grim for Joe Bob: Bloom quit his job at the Times Herald and signed with a new syndicate, but the number of papers that carried his column dropped from 57 to 11.

In the end, though, the publicity proved a bonanza. Today, Bloom has turned Joe Bob Briggs into something of a cottage industry, with two books, a show on the Movie Channel cable network, a new syndicated radio program, a column of political and social commentary called “Wisdom on Parade” and a few minor movie roles (including one as Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips in the upcoming Jerry Lee Lewis bio-pic “Great Balls of Fire”).

He is also developing a television “anti-sitcom” in which he will star as Joe Bob, which has already drawn interest from two networks. And in the fall, Bloom plans to take Joe Bob on the road as a stand-up act. “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In” continues to run, now appearing in 75 newspapers (“Every time an editor dies, I get a new paper,” Bloom said).

So Bloom, who calls himself an “equal-opportunity offender,” continues to do battle with the “high sheriffs”--his collective term for moral tastemakers, from pressure groups to newspaper editors.

“I’ve been kicked out of some of the finest newspapers in America,” Bloom said. “I’ve never been in an Orange County newspaper, so I figure you’re way ahead of the rest of the country.”

But Bloom stopped short of characterizing his travails with editors as censorship; most are simply afraid of controversy.

“It’s not repression. It’s not censorship,” he said. “It’s cowardice.”