Rating: 
Summary: 2 False reviews compelled me to write a just one
Review: After reading a terribly unjust review by Eric Peterson I was compelled to write a just one on behalf of a great man, Steve Allen. I have been a Steve Allen fan for many years. He is one of the greatest figures in television history. Steve Allen is is no way a hippocrate, as Eric Peterson sadly tried to portray. Why bash a man's last work that is his best work. I believe, as I hope most americans do, Steve's views in this book. Apparently Mr. Peterson is one of the many americans who values "trash tv and raunch radio". Television and radio needs to go back to how it was when I was a kid, when the Tonight Show was hosted by Steve. Eric claims that Steve is a hippocrate because he bashes pro wrestling, when in fact Steve did a biography on pro wrestling. Steve doesn't like what wrestling is today and has turned into. In all of the instances of hippocracy, they all do not correspond chronologically; therefore, they are not valid arguements. I believe that what Steve preaches should be taken seriously, because it is a large problem that is only going to get worse if no one acts against it. This could only bring nationwide tragedy. The school shootings have been proven to be related to the very problem that Steve discusses in the book. This book is a great book by Steve Allen and is undeserving of some bad reviews. If all parents read Steve's book and did their part to help stop this problem, the United States would reach new heights of glory. There would no longer be school shootings or violence between children. Most people don't believe that this problem doesn't concern them, because it could never happen to them. This book will make you concerned, and spur a nationwide sentiment that the popular culture is not a representation of what most of America feels. I don't believe that the people of this country love sex, drugs, violence, and want these things shown to children as they grow up!
Rating: 
Summary: good synthesis of sleaze facts
Review: Allen's book may not seem like anything new, because many have gone before him on this topic. Nevertheless, _Vulgarians_ is an excellent synthesis of current theories about the effect of media sleaze on young people.
Allen doesn't propose outright censorship, but he reminds us that that self-policing by the media congloms is never going to happen as long as sleaze remains profitable.
He also explores a point that is sometimes missed by media critics: The CEOs of the huge companies that sponsor the TV shows, as well as the CEOs of the huge media congloms, are "country club conservatives" who no doubt support Bush and conservative politics. Yet they mysteriously become amoral when it comes to propagating media garbage because they'e making so much money from it. FOX network comes to mind...
Allen observes, ironically, that few of these people would want their own six year-old daughters to be exposed to the junk they're selling, but they don't mind exposing the masses' children to it.
Rating:
Summary: RIGHT ON, STEVE!
Review: Althouh I am a longtime admirer of Steve Allen, and have some sympathy with his concerns about the coarsening of our popular culture, I have to give this book a low rating. It is poorly thought out and feels too much like the rantings of a bitter old man. Some of the examples he uses are ludicrous. He continually harps on the theme that earlier comedians (Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, etc.) were funny without being "dirty", forgetting that these and others pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in their time. When he decides to praise a more recent comedian working in this hallowed tradition, he names Benny Hill (!), one of the primary exponents of the breast-and-buttocks school of humor. There are surely many better books on this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Ranting and Raving
Review: Althouh I am a longtime admirer of Steve Allen, and have some sympathy with his concerns about the coarsening of our popular culture, I have to give this book a low rating. It is poorly thought out and feels too much like the rantings of a bitter old man. Some of the examples he uses are ludicrous. He continually harps on the theme that earlier comedians (Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, etc.) were funny without being "dirty", forgetting that these and others pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in their time. When he decides to praise a more recent comedian working in this hallowed tradition, he names Benny Hill (!), one of the primary exponents of the breast-and-buttocks school of humor. There are surely many better books on this topic.
Rating:
Summary: Objectively speaking......
Review: Censorship and Vulagarity seem to be issues where there is no middle ground, but I will try to take it here in this review. I think a credible case could be made here that Steve Allen was in fact the man who brought the likes of Lenny Bruce and Kerouac (as well as that ever-shining role model Jerry Lee Lewis) to national audiences, so it's easy for some to see this book as a hypocritical railing against modern "entertainment," especially the somewhat prissy rant about the Mustard commerical that draws humor from the mustard bottle sounding like someone who has a bad gas attack. This book could have been easily written in any decade (after all, Steve throws in a few damns and hells himself here, which some still consider profane). I thought it was a bit much, on the chapter on gangster rap, to go through several pages of uncensored 2 Live Crew, Ice-T, and Eminem lyrics. One or two snippets of these kinds of lyrics would have been enough to get the point. However, one has to admit that much of this is also justifiable.
No one wants to hear small children in real life speaking or acting like Madonna, Howard Stern, Eminem, etc. One has to admit that it's true that modern entertainment IS getting dangerously close to the grotesque days of the Roman circuses. (By the way, looks like Steve indulged in a bit of prophecy. In Charleston SC, Howard Stern was yanked off the air not because of low ratings, but because the advertisers got cold feet at beign associated with Stern's mess, just as Steve said would happen someday in this book)!
Rating:
Summary: Thanks Steve - for everything........
Review: I grew up watching Steve Allen on the tube in L.A. Those were his early years, and he provided a lot of laughs and comic routines that in time became classics. Only later did I learn more about his career, the successful songwriter and true renaissance man. This book is a fitting postscript to his career, which contributed immensely to improving American culture. The title says it all - we do, indeed, have "vulgarians" at the gate. Allen managed to make the world laugh - without once stepping into the gutter. Movies and television in the past entertained and moved millions - without stepping into the gutter. Steve Allen has the nerve to point this out - to say out loud that the "emperor" of modern entertainment really has no clothes. For this he is being posthumously pilloried by folks who don't like the obvious being pointed out. That's too bad, as Steve Allen raises many serious points, worthy of serious thought - not knee-jerk hostility. I found the book intriguing and thought provoking. His basic message is that it is up to us as individuals to accept the responsibility for what passes as "entertainment", and that if we are unhappy with what we see - take action. That formula is as American as apple pie - as was the author. So one final time - thanks Steve. Thanks for making me laugh as a teenager staying up later than I should just to watch you. Thanks for the wonderful songs that we still hum. Thanks for the books that have made us think. And thanks for being willing, right to the end, to stand up for what you believe.
Rating:
Summary: Still going to hell in a hand basket
Review: I have been a Steve Allen fan since the late 50s. He was a comic genius, a so-so composer and a poor author. Most of this book is devoted to endless transcripts of the Madonna appearance on David Letterman, HBO's "Sex and the City", and rap lyrics. This is the kind of stuff that most people just naturally turn off and go on with their lives, but Mr. Allen seems to have taken a great deal of umbrage at them. It is easy to complain about how standards are being lowered. The hard part is figuring out what to do about it. Mr. Allen doesn't have much to suggest other than government censorship. He doesn't make a very strong case for censorship so the whole book comes off as a crotchety old man complaining about how bad things have gotten. You can get this kind of stuff for free from your grand parents so why pay $20 for it?
Rating:
Summary: This book took courage
Review: I think Steve Allen made an absolutely convincing case in "Vulgarians at the Gate" that American culture has been measurably coarsened in recent years -- and that TV is the most powerful medium in establishing the new, oh-so-low standards as the norm among children. All you have to do is watch a little TV to see how obviously right Steve Allen was. But one thing about this book is not so obvious: the COURAGE that Steve Allen showed in speaking his mind. He had to know that in the close-knit Hollywood community, which is so intolerant of criticism, his career would be hurt by the stand he took. How many other stars of Steve Allen's magnitude have uttered even one word of caution about the sweeping away of moral standards in the media that have made them fabulously wealthy? Steve Allen stood virtually alone. That took a lot of guts, and parents and grandparents owe him a debt of gratitude for the courage he displayed.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthy topic. Worthy author. Unworthy results.
Review: It's very interesting reading the reviews on Amazon.com for Vulgarians At The Gate: people seem to either love it or hate it. In my opinion, Allen offers a few good insights. Unfortunately, the book ultimately fails to fully persuade, and Allen comes off as more than a little cranky & bitter. Steve seemed to fall into an obvious trap in considering that the period in which he was involved with television as the medium's "golden age." In my opinion, television never had a "golden age"! The vast majority of television programs have been infinitely banal, slavishly imitative, and/or predictable shock-garbage. Steve gripes about how TV now resorts to "depraved vulgarity," whereas his era's comedians were cleanly funny. The only problem is that, by in large, the comedians of that era were NOT funny. How can anyone find the obnoxious ranting & screaming of Jackie Gleeson or Danny Thomas funny? The television of that era was dominated by the sexist view that a woman is either a screwball (I Love Lucy), a naive wife-child (Leave It To Beaver), or a verbal, and possibly a literal punching bag (Honeymooners). In this light, I guess TV has actually made some progress. Allen's arguments are also more than a little confusing. He complains about the "tastelessness" of a Grey Poupon commercial that implied flatulence, yet praises Benny Hill! He (rightly) criticizes the role religion has historically played in censorship, yet encourages religious groups to boycott dubious programs. He disdains the "fourteen-year old mentality" of TV's earlier era programming, yet seems to want to return to the banality of The Brady Bunch. I do believe that Steve makes some very good points. The vast majority of TV shows ARE puerile garbage. Without a doubt, the television has dumbed-down America considerably; and taking into account that we have never been the most intellectual of societies, that's quite an achievement! The oafish self-promotion of Madonna, Howard Stern and Jerry Springer are rightly criticized by Allen. There is a definite line between vulgarity and pornography; the chapter on rap lyrics really demonstrates this. I personally cannot believe that music that espouses sentiments like rape, murder and necrophilia are actually available to kids. In case you are wondering, I'm not a 60-year old conservative, but a 27-year old liberal. I most definitely do not endorse blanket censorship; I do believe, however, that the "parent advisory" stickers are worse than useless. If a buyer is required to be of a certain age before he or she can purchase cigarettes, porn, or alcohol, then buying this crap should require the same discretion and maturity. I propose that music such as this should be "behind the counter," and not available to kids at all. Unfortunately, Allen seems to really lose it when he praises the former movie censorship code. He states that classics like Citizen Cain were made despite the code. Citizen Cain is indeed a classic; unfortunately, many classics would NOT have been made if that code were still in place. He also states that artists should have a responsibility in providing "clean" entertainment for children. The fact of the matter is that great art is never merely entertainment. For my money, the greatest artistic achievements of the Western world in the last thousand years are William Shakespeare's plays and Richard Wagner's operas. These works are rife with murder, rape, incest, and violence. They amount to MUCH more than that, of course. But what gives them their power is their emotional scope, and censorship doesn't allow that latitude. Finally, Allen rightly criticizes the state of Kansas for banning the theory of evolution from its school textbooks. Thankfully, that is no longer the case. The problem is that Steve seems to want to court the support of those social conservatives who made an atrocity like that possible. It seems that liberals are fighting a two-front war; on one side is puerile, lowbrow shock-garbage, the other is religious fanaticism.
Rating:
Summary: Getting America out of the gutter and back up on sidewalk
Review: Mr. Allen doesn't say that certain expletive words are bad, in and of themselves, but that used for simply shock value they lose their appeal and meaning. His book reminded me of a PBS special I saw a few years back with Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart from the old Show of Shows program when I was a toddler. It was Mel Brooks who made the astute observation as Steve Allen does so well in this book, that as television became more available to the masses, often an uneducated masses, television dumbed down. That when television first came out, only those with money and alas the education to have a great job could afford a television. And it was this same population that being well educated, didn't need things spelled out for them. They could hear an innuendo in a joke and "get it". But as more and more people could afford a television the more crude shows became. Steve Allen was one of the biggest supporters of the late comic genius Lenny Bruce who in December 2003 month, was granted a posthumous pardon by the Governor of New York, George Pataki, for his (Lenny Bruces) 1964 conviction for using obscene language in a Greenwich Village nightclub act. Lenny Bruce appeared in nightclubs where his act included routines on controversial themes (religious, political and social) often done in very strong blunt language. He isn't advocating censorship, but some way of getting dumbed down America out of the gutter and back up on the damn sidewalk. And he fully supports Lenny Bruce style "mature" humor which Bill Maher (whom I like) does. Mr. Allen wants to prick the readers consciousness and get them to think for a change and raise the level of intellect so that the Howard Sterns of the world are seen for the sophomoric people they are and the Lenny Bruces and Mort Sahl's are respected for being the social, religious and political genius provocateurs that they are, by using language often harsh or profane, for intellectual discourse and positive change.
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