Still, Cheney poisoned the bipartisan spirit of the hearing with a sloppy accusation about a movie I doubt she's even seen, and by making a snarky remark about Gore and Lieberman's anticipated attendance at an entertainment-related Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York on Thursday evening. The Gore-Lieberman simultaneous Hollywood bash/shakedown is a legitimate question to raise, but the Senate hearing was an inappropriate setting, and after the Lieberman-McCain slow-dance, it just looked bitter and nasty.

Which, at least, was consistent.

After declaring herself to be the anti-Eminem, Cheney snarked that Gore and Lieberman should take Miramax's Harvey Weinstein to task for the film "Kids" when they see him Thursday night. Cheney implied that director Larry Clark's "Kids" -- a movie marketed to adults -- condoned prepubescents engaging in violent and sexual activities. A release Wednesday from the Bush campaign said that "Kids" "showed young teenagers -- 13 and 14 -- having sex, participating in rape, smoking pot and assaulting strangers."

But "Kids" didn't glorify that behavior, it condemned it. The movie's message was too many members of Generation Y are being lost to us due to absent adequate supervision and a flurry of destructive and pernicious media influences.

As Richard Corliss wrote in Time magazine, "In 'Kids,' kids have easy sex; they have potent drugs; they seem to have total freedom from parental discipline. What they don't have is fun. Screwing around has become mandatory, and thus joyless, like house chores or homework. A truly radical, dangerous movie about teens would show the lure of the wild life while avoiding the twin tones of sensationalism and sentimentality. Clark's film doesn't do that."

Additionally, Roger Ebert called "Kids" "the kind of movie that needs to be talked about afterward. It doesn't tell us what it means. Sure, it has a 'message,' involving safe sex. But safe sex is not going to civilize these kids, make them into curious, capable citizens." The kids the film depicts, Ebert writes, "represent a failure of home, school, church and society."

So either Cheney never saw the film or she completely missed the point of it. (Which might be a matter for a second Senate hearing: Should the MPAA be held responsible for content that individuals like Cheney either don't see or don't understand?) It was easy to see that Cheney's whole process had been rushed. She bragged about a faux-creative idea of putting her protest of Eminem's misogynistic lyrics into letters to the two female members of the board of the Seagram Company, which owns Eminem's label, Interscope.

But "The Marshall Mathers LP," which Cheney said she was offended by, was released on May 23. Cheney's letters to the Seagram executives were dated Tuesday, Sept. 12, the day before the hearing.

So not only was it a gimmick; it was hastily conceived, the worst kind of bandwagon politics. And it was not unlike Gore's on-again, off-again condemnation of the excesses of Hollywood, which apparently becomes top priority when he's talking to soccer moms in Ohio, but disappears when Gore is among Armani-clad producers in Malibu, Calif.

But Cheney's wasn't the only ignorance on display for the crowd. The artistic community provided plenty.

Indeed, most of the members of Congress who testified -- including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., Lieberman, self-described "occasional songwriter" Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. -- generally stuck to the larger, disturbing points raised in the FTC report.

While most were quick to say that Hollywood wasn't the only guilty party, hardly any of them even mentioned the ease with which kids can obtain firearms in this country. McCain veered once or twice too often into his whole campaign-finance, soft-money-is-evil shtick, but for the most part the senators were on sturdy ground, armed as they were with the FTC's methodically culled data.

The data didn't do the most damage, however. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, effectively displayed harsh lyrics by Eminem, Dr. Dre and the Ruff Ryders, a stark example of a product seemingly inappropriate for kids' consumption. Read one Dr. Dre work Brownback had blown up and matted (and censored, a tad):

I know yo type, so much b**ch in you/If it was slightly darker, lights was little dimmer/my d**k be stuck up in yo windpipe/Hmm, you'd rather blow me than fight/I'm from the old school, you owe me the right to slap you,/like the b**ch that you are/Youse a b**ch n**ga, motherf****n b**ch n**ga

There was little for the entertainment execs to say, especially since none of them seem able to understand why any parent might find it disturbing if his or her child was singing the delightful Gershwin-esque tune above. Just as the senators repeatedly tried to show they weren't complete book-burners by incessantly listing "Saving Private Ryan," "Schindler's List" and "The Patriot" as films they deemed OK, almost all of the entertainment executives pointed out that they, themselves, had kids. Attempts by both sides to prove their humanity with these stats fell as flat as that Vanilla Ice movie.

Recent Stories