Press: Crankier Critics of the Tube

New breed of TV writers throws beanballs, not puffballs

Mid-afternoon at the Century Plaza hotel in Los Angeles. A group of newspaper television critics have assembled to talk to the stars and producer of CBS's The Dukes of Hazzard, a misbegotten rip-off of Smokey and the Bandit. The questions are relaxed, the answers as washed as California light. Finally, Ginny Weissman, editor of the Chicago Tribune's weekly television guide, has had enough. "I thought your show was in very bad taste," she says. "I kept wondering, why is it necessary to spit on the windshield? Why so much tobacco juice? Why such...

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