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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Politicians line up to throw haymakers at showbiz for marketing to kids -- and manage to miss plenty.
Sep 14, 2000 | There was a challenge to public mores Wednesday as a Senate committee listened to testimony about the marketing of violent entertainment products to children. But it wasn't because of Eminem's misogyny, sicko kids like Dylan Klebold or even Hootie and the Blowfish's second album. Rather, the horror came from both politicians and entertainment executives who indicated -- in their own distinctly charmless ways -- their utter cluelessness and alienation from the American public at large.
The hearings were an attempt to shine a light on the Federal Trade Commission study that concludes that film, music and video game products -- ones that the entertainment companies' own labeling systems judged to be inappropriate for children -- were being directly marketed to children.
But what if you held a hearing and nobody came? Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the committee, almost found out the answer to that question when executives from the motion picture industry didn't even bother to show. With venom-spittle showering the chairman's microphone, McCain noted the "uncanny coincidence" of the fact that "every single studio executive was either out of the country or unavailable."
"I've only been on this committee for 14 years, and I've never seen such a thing," he said, attributing it to "hubris." McCain announced in his opening statement that he was convening an additional hearing in two weeks, demanding that today's absentees attend. He even called out luminaries like Walt Disney's Michael Eisner, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch and Viacom's Sumner Redstone by name.
In addition to the studio execs' collective no-show, McCain seemed to be most fired up about the FTC report's account of a studio putting together a focus group of children 11 years old and younger to see how best it could market an R-rated movie.
Even Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti had to take umbrage at that. But Valenti was generally there to defend the indefensible. Justifying the film executives' absence with explanations that they were very, very busy, Valenti did agree that "it appears from the report that some marketing people stepped over the line." But in general, the old codger represented the industry, seemingly arguing against the very ratings system he supervises.
"When we draw lines in the creative world, those lines are ill-illuminated and hazily observed," he said. "This isn't Euclidean geometry, where the equations are pristine and explicit. These are subjective judgments." When asked about the FTC report's "Mystery Shopper Survey," which indicates that underage kids could get into R-rated movies almost 50 percent of the time, Valenti made a Clintonian distinction between movies with a "hard R" rating and a "soft R" rating, which did little to reassure the committee that the motion picture ratings worked.
"In our ratings system, we don't say anything's 'unsuitable,'" Valenti said. "We say it's 'inappropriate' ... A parent makes that judgment ... It doesn't mean you can't go."
Valenti was just one of many entertainment voices that didn't seem to get how damning the FTC report's conclusions are. FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky urged greater self-regulation so as not to step on First Amendment issues, but he did leave the door open to considering legislation if Hollywood doesn't shape up, much less show up.
But even among the folks who showed up -- namely the politicians -- there was something missing. Most egregious and alarming was the absence of any serious thought or thorough research in the seemingly ad-libbed remarks of Lynne Cheney, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the wife of GOP vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney.
Campaign workers for Cheney's hubby -- and his boss, Texas Gov. George W. Bush -- hurriedly called McCain staffers over the weekend, eager to insert Cheney into the witness list. They were apparently worried that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who also testified -- being that he was one of the original co-sponsors of the Senate bill that called for the FTC study to begin with -- was helping Gore steal the Hollywood-bashing high ground where many of the swing voters the Gore and Bush camps are competing for seem to dwell. McCain acquiesced, even going so far as to say that the invitation had been his idea, which one might observe is not quite "straight talk."
Be that as it may, Bush headquarters must have been dismayed with Lieberman's headlining testimony. "This practice is deceptive," he said, "and I believe it is outrageous, and I hope it will stop." Nor could Austin have been pleased with Lieberman's rock-star treatment, especially the image of his warm embrace of his pal McCain. The hug was no doubt sincere -- the two are friends, and Lieberman was quite concerned during McCain's recent bout with cancer. But the warmth and intensity of the bear hug rivaled only that of the PDA the world saw at the Democratic Convention between Vice President Al Gore and Tipper, minus the spit-swapping. Not quite what the Bushies were looking for.
