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Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen. We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since. It was only a minute long. The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. But that’s all it took.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85. Valenti had a stroke in March and was hospitalized for several weeks at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore. He died of complications of the stroke at his Washington, D.C., home, said Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry: Today, RNC chair Ken Mehlman will apologize for the Republicans' divisive, racist Southern strategy: "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong." Even in what is fast becoming the sorriest year in American politics, Mehlman's apology may be the most galling. If not for its Southern strategy, Ken Mehlman would be stuck in Baltimore and the modern Republican party simply would not exist. From...

IN Washington, the cords of collegiality that used to bind the members of Congress to one another - and to the president - haven't just frayed, they've snapped. This descent into enmity is not just one party's fault. There is blame to distribute among all. As Congress struggles through a particularly rancorous session, it is worth recalling a time when compromise had not been exiled from our government. I had the good fortune to see this firsthand when I worked for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Though historians have painted President Johnson as someone who would do just about anything to...

Feb. 28 issue - Dan Glickman isn't exactly the Hollywood type. More comfortable in pinstripes than Prada, he's a former Clinton Agriculture secretary, Kansas congressman and president of the Witchita school board—and nothing like the flashy, debonair Jack Valenti, the legendary head of the Motion Picture Association of America. After 38 years at the MPAA, Valenti has become a celebrity in his own right, landing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But as Glickman heads toward his first Academy Awards since taking over for Valenti as the industry's chief lobbyist, he's the one schmoozing Hollywood directors and...

Fahrenheit 911 was apparently shown last week on Fidel Castro's Cuban state run TV!According to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rules, a motion picture feature is disqualified for documentary Oscar if it airs on TV or over the Internet within nine months of its bigscreen run..

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A recent broadcast on Cuban television of Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" has raised questions about the Oscar eligibility of one of America's most talked-about and critically acclaimed movies of the year. Under Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (news - web sites) rules, films are disqualified from competing in the Oscar race for best documentary if shown on television or on the Internet within nine months of their theatrical release. However, an unauthorized or pirated display of a film would not render the movie ineligible, academy spokesman John Pavlik said on Tuesday. "If somebody...

RATINGS ABUSE After the Motion Picture Association of America slapped Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 911 with an "R" rating late last week, and it became clear that the MPAA would not budge, Moore and his distributors hired one man they think can change the MPAA's mind: former New York governor Mario Cuomo. According to an MPAA staffer in Washington, Cuomo is being paid a five figure fee to make appeals all the way to the top of MPAA. That would mean former Lyndon Johnson staffer Jack Valenti. On Wednesday, on the "Today" show, Moore revealed that the scenes of abuse...

WASHINGTON — Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti defended smoking in Hollywood films, but senators insisted the industry must do more to stop the practice. "I don't believe that whatever the director does ought to incite the intervention of the government in any form," Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday. "I've got to tell you I believe it is his right to tell the story as he chooses to tell it." Some lawmakers were dissatisfied by his answers. A study last year found that teens who watch movies with smoking in...

Fresh from his latest win in Maine, the favourite to challenge George Bush for the US presidency has secured the financial support of some of the most powerful media moguls in the world. As John Kerry's campaign to secure the Democrat nomination - and with it a crack at the White House - continues to gather pace, it has emerged that it is being bankrolled by key executives from News Corporation, MTV-owner Viacom and Sony. The victory in Maine, Mr Kerry's 10th out of the 12 primaries in the opening weeks of the Democrat selection campaign, confirmed his position as...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former aides to President Johnson met with History Channel executives Wednesday to demand a re-examination of a program that accused Johnson of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. "We can't let stand the blatant falsity of the allegation in that program," Larry Temple, special counsel in the Johnson White House and president of The LBJ Foundation, said after the meeting in New York. The aides, along with former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and Johnson's widow, Lady Bird Johnson, want an independent probe of the claims in "The Guilty Men," which the channel aired in November....

Is there an original way to comment on the badness of Tina Brown's new column in the Washington Post "Style" section? Brown's widely ridiculed Oct. 23 debut detailed the latest trial faced by "members of the Manhattan buzzocracy," of which Brown and her husband, Harold Evans, are queen and knave. Until this year, Hollywood studios distributed home-video versions of Oscar-contending films to the folks who vote for the Oscars, but evidence that pirates were copying and selling them prompted MPAA President Jack Valenti to ban the practice this go-round. So, as Brown details in her column, publicity agents are begging...

<p>Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin has been plucked to replace Jack Valenti, the long-running head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), according to sources familiar with the matter.</p> <p>Speculation that the 82-year-old Valenti, who has headed the movie industry's powerful lobbying group since 1966, would step down has run rampant for years. But now, sources say, Tauzin, a Republican, has agreed to take the job, which comes with a reported $1 million annual salary.</p>

WASHINGTON -- As part of an uphill battle against Internet movie piracy, entertainment industry lobbyist Jack Valenti offered university students a lesson in morality Tuesday. "Too many students don't believe it's wrong to steal these movies," Valenti told students at Georgetown University Law Center. "It is fracturing the moral contract to take something that does not belong to you." The appearance was one of several that the president of the Motion Picture Association of America plans at prominent universities over the next few months. Students are among the heaviest online traffickers of illegally copied material. Since the late 1990s, a...

<p>IF Bill O'Reilly's goal was to make some purveyors of shock culture look like total jerks, then his special airing tonight is a complete success.</p> <p>And the word "jerks" is actually too mild a description for some of O'Reilly's targets in the show, which is titled "An 'O'Reilly Factor' Special: The Corruption of the American Child," airing at 9 p.m. on Fox/Ch. 5 (not the Fox News Channel).</p>