Last year Hollywood heavily supported Al Gore and Sen. Joe Lieberman in their run for the White House. Now many of those same Hollywood folks find themselves under attack by Lieberman’s perennial support for censorship.
Lieberman’s latest proposal is a bill that would grant the Federal Trade Commission to go after the entertainment industry for “deceptive advertising.” Joining him to co-sponsor the legislation is none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The bill would give the FTC the ability to fine entertainment executives who “target” children with ads for movies, music and video games which are rated as requiring parental advisory. Imagine, for example, that an CD has a “Parental Advisory” for explicit lyrics, but there’s an advertisement for the CD in Seventeen or some other magazine read by minors. In that case the FTC would be empowered to investigate and fine the company.
William Baldwin, the actor and president of the Creative Coalition which opposes the bill, said, “A governmental role in defining ‘acceptable’ entertainment is an indirect form of censorship.” Actually I’d argue it is a pretty direct form of censorship.
Ironically, the man that many in Hollywood worked hard to defeat is reportedly unlikely to support the bill. A spokesman for Bush recently said that it would instead concentrate its efforts on working with the entertainment industry on better means of self-regulation — exactly what Baldwin and the Creative Coalition advocate.
Many in Hollywood, including Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America, believe that the Lieberman bill would mean an end to the voluntary ratings of movies as companies would stop having their films rated in order to avoid potential liability.
Sources:
Celebs urge pols to drop marketing bill. Pamela McClintock, Variety, June 21, 2001.
Bush resists Lieberman’s fight against Hollywood. NewsMax.Com, June 22,2001.