Analysis

Politicians who went into the hearings with a preconceived solution to the "problem" of rock and roll were more likely to be negative, regardless of ideology. For example, in PMRC Democrat Al Gore and Republican John Danforth both wanted the music industry to self-regulate rather than Congress to pass legislation, resulting in a more positive score. Paula Hawkins and Fritz Hollings, however, wanted to find constitutional loopholes to censor music, resulting in antagonism scores that were three times higher. In the Payola hearings, the committee was unified to take legal action, resulting in a consistently high negative score. The same pattern occurred in the HUAC hearings, where the committee wanted to blacklist Seeger.

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 "I am asking the best of constitutional minds if there is some way in the world to try to limit it."

-Fritz Hollings (D)

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Senators made more negative and antagonistic comments when their witnesses were perceived as "criminals." For example, the Payola hearings featured three witnesses who had either admitted to accepting payola or faced accusations of doing it, increasing negativity and antagonism across the board. The HUAC committee also believed Pete Seeger was a communist sympathizer. Their desire to "catch" Seeger, coupled with his facetious responses, resulted in an extremely negative score for the Democrat and Republican in the hearing with him. In contrast, the PMRC hearings headlined three music legends who were consulted on the music industry in general. Except for Dee Snider, the witnesses were not considered criminals or liable for explicit music, and the scores trended slightly more positive on average.

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"Did you ever disclose that a record being played on your program which was owned by one of your' companies was, in fact owned by you?"

-John Bennett (R) to Dick Clark

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The chart is not balanced; it leans more conservative. The most extreme score on the liberal side is Al Gore, with a -.316. There are two conservative politicians who are further away from the center than Gore by almost two points: Samuel Devine with a .502 and Gordon Scherer with a .539. These two politician's extreme conservatism and extreme negativity towards rock and roll seem to suggest that ideology doesn't correlate with conservatism up to a certain point. But somewhere between John Danforth's .196 and Devine's .502, conservatives are more likely to be against rock music. Without more data, however, it is not conclusive whether this is true or whether Devine and Scherer are outliers in both conservatism and negativity.

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"I hope that no member of the subcommittee commends him for his frankness, becuase I think he has been considerably less than frank"

- Samuel Devine (R) to Dave Maynard

While this project was systematic, it was not scientific. There was a large amount of subjectivity involved in coding statements as negative or neutral, flattering or positive. If it was done by anyone else, or maybe if I were to do it again, the data would be slightly different. Furthermore, this data represents only a slice of all statements from these hearings. Selecting different slices could also produce different results. A further study with more time and resources could dive into one of these hearings in a more complete manner. By studying all the statements made by every politician in each of these hearings, a more clear pattern of ideology and attitude can emerge.   

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"Obviously, some of these things could have been cleared up, it appears to me."

-Orren Harris (D)