At a record $4.2 million Hollywood fund-raiser that night, Mr. Lieberman told the crowd, "Al and I have tremendous regard for this industry. We're both fans of the products that come out of the entertainment industry--not all of them, but a lot of them. The industry has entertained and inspired and educated us over the years." He then said: "I promise you this: We will never, never put the government in the position of telling you by law, through law, what to make. We will noodge you, but we will never become censors."

It was an extraordinary turnaround. Last year Mr. Lieberman said, "If they continue to market death and degradation to our children and pay no heed to the carnage, then one way or another, the government will act." And earlier this year Mr. Lieberman sent a letter, signed by three other senators, to the Federal Communications Commission asking it to consider whether broadcasters are serving the public interest. Mr. Lieberman and his colleagues wrote that the rise in the level of sexual and violent content indicated that the stations and their network parents "are breaching this public trust, and harming rather than serving the public interest."

In addition, I have stood side-by-side with Mr. Lieberman countless times since the mid-1990s, handing out the Silver Sewer Award and denouncing the filth that often emanates from Hollywood. I have heard him attack the entertainment industry with ferocity, accusing them of "pushing the envelope of civility and morality in a way that drags the rest of the culture down."

Is there any question that Mr. Lieberman has shifted his ground?

Nobody who ever attended those events, or received those letters, would come away with the impression that Mr. Lieberman was just being a noodge (a Yiddish term meaning a gentle nag). He and I were forcefully trying to shame the entertainment industry. Yet earlier this week, Mr. Lieberman's powerful, direct criticisms mutated into lavish praise.

Mr. Lieberman justifies this behavior by saying that he and Mr. Gore have shown "courage" in criticizing their own supporters; he cites their response to the recent Federal Trade Commission report that was critical of the entertainment industry for its marketing practices to children. But saying one thing by day (for political consumption), and something completely different by night (for fund-raising purposes) is hardly admirable.

What would have been courageous, to say nothing of consistent, is if Mr. Lieberman had said some of the same things to his recent Hollywood audiences as he said when he stood with me over the years, excoriating them for degrading our popular culture. What we are seeing is not courage but incoherence--or, what would be even worse, cravenness and cynicism.

Here's the game the Gore-Lieberman team seem to be playing. From time to time the candidates will say something critical of Hollywood because it's good politics. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, recently dismissed the Democrats' words as carefully calibrated political posturing. "Frankly," he said, "if I were running for office I'd be trashing the movie industry myself."

At the same time, signals have been sent to the entertainment industry that the Democrats are not going to walk the walk. We learned, according to the Washington Post, that shortly after Mr. Gore named Mr. Lieberman as his running mate, "Tipper Gore called Hilary B. Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America . . . to assuage her concerns about Lieberman's history of targeting sex and violence in popular culture. One entertainment industry executive who received a call from a Gore official in Nashville said he was told that attacking Hollywood had not been a major focus of the campaign and that no change was expected. 'It's very meaningful that they call and they know how concerned we are,' the executive said. 'That helps a lot.' "

We also know that last year Mr. Gore huddled with industry executives to distance himself from the very FTC inquiry that he is now embracing. According to participants in the meeting, "Gore made clear that the government study--disparaged by some in Hollywood as a witch hunt--was the president's idea, not his, and was initiated without his input." And we know that in 1987, when Mr. Gore was running for president and in need of money, he and his wife went to Hollywood to apologize abjectly for Tipper Gore's campaign against sexually explicit lyrics.

In response to public comments I made that were critical of this week's Hollywood fund-raiser, Mr. Lieberman said he was "disappointed" in the way I feel, and suggested that my criticisms were based on the fact that the Republican presidential campaign appears to be "faltering." That makes two of us who are disappointed--but only one of us who has changed his position. It also ignores the facts that until Monday night's event I have been a visible public defender of Mr. Lieberman and, as recently as two weeks ago, I had voiced concern about the Bush campaign.

There is one other noteworthy event that took place in Hollywood Monday night. Before Mr. Lieberman spoke, Larry David, who was executive producer of "Seinfeld," gave a speech in which he derided Gov. Bush as a "smirking" lightweight who is "making it possible for a lot of idiots like myself to actually consider running for office." Then Mr. David, who is Jewish, ridiculed the Texas governor's faith. "Like Bush," he said, "I too found Christ in my 40s. He came into my room one night, and I said: 'What, no call? You just pop in?' "

This comment was not made in good fun; it was part of a cheap, derisive attack against George W. Bush. This kind of thing ought to be denounced, and I would have hoped that Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman, who have thrust their own faith forward and embraced a message of religious tolerance in their campaign, would have been among the first to do so. Instead, Mr. Lieberman was quoted as saying after the event that he thought Mr. David was "very funny." (Yesterday, when pressed about it, Mr. Lieberman said the joke was "in bad taste" but, "on the other hand, that's freedom of expression.")

A few months ago, C-Span viewers were able to watch a somewhat remarkable scene: the president of the U.S., along with his vice president, attending a Democratic fund-raiser in Washington, regaled by the foul-mouthed humor of comedian Robin Williams. A few weeks ago, Cher sang at a Hollywood-style fund-raiser attended by Messrs. Gore and Lieberman. When asked her thoughts about her late ex-husband, Sonny Bono, becoming a Republican, she said he was "full of sh--." And now we have the comments of Larry David. If the Gore-Lieberman ticket wins, we can expect that these are some of the people who will be setting the cultural tone for America. Is this really something we want, or need?

Since Mr. Gore selected him, Mr. Lieberman has either backed away from, or grown silent on, a number of issues he once addressed: affirmative action, school choice, tort reform, the infamous 1996 White House fund-raising events, the "immoral" conduct of President Clinton. And now he has gone, with muted voice and an open hand, to mansions in Beverly Hills.

When the campaign began, I hoped that a kind of tropism would occur. In terms of political integrity and character, I had hoped that Al Gore would become more like my friend Joe Lieberman. Instead, it appears Joe Lieberman has become more, much more, like Al Gore. And for those of us who know and have admired Joe Lieberman, that is a sad thing to behold.