Posted on 05/19/2004 4:17:16 AM PDT by SheLion
The Greatest Evil
Congress needs to butt out of our business.
May 17, 2004, 7:30 a.m.
By Shawn Macomber
The gears of the nanny state ground forward last week as the Senate Commerce Committee held hearings to determine whether movies that portray smoking should receive an "R" rating. As usual, the government was all stick and very little carrot.
"We're calling for personal restraint. We're calling for personal responsibility," Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.), said, quite reasonably, followed all too quickly by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), who was less magnanimous. "If something isn't done by the industry, something will be done by Congress," Wyden threatened. "Personal responsibility" apparently now means living up to the arbitrary whims and mores determined by the federal government. So long as those whims are bipartisan, of course.
This in the midst of an election campaign that, so we are told, is one of the most significant in our country's recent history: The economy is collapsing, terrorists are at our doorstep, global environmental ruin is imminent, and baby boomers are more likely to retire to cardboard boxes than to Florida. I've seen John Kerry's commercials, and it's not pretty. Yet our government has determined that Now is the time to end the scourge of smoke on the silver screen.
So what is a movie rating exactly? The original ratings system was created as a response to a 1968 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the rights of states and cities to keep certain books and films available to adults out of the purview of children. In other words, ratings are meant to protect children from something they otherwise would not have contact with in the public square.
The "R" rating, as it stands today, warns parents that a film contains nudity, sexual situations, hard language, or illegal-drug use. These are reasonable cultural demarcation lines because each of these acts in a public setting before a child would be illegal. A couple having sex on an elementary-school playground would be arrested, for example. Shooting heroin in front of your neighbor's kid while repeatedly shouting the "F" word could get you in trouble as well.
Smoking is an altogether separate matter. Cigarettes are not an illegal product, and their use by adults is accepted in public. Parents, friends, older siblings, bad-boy (and -girl) musicians can all smoke in front of them, without consequence. A parent, teacher, or older sibling can all light up in their presence without facing a citation or a ride downtown. More importantly, the oh-so-cool 18-year-old leather-jacket rebel at the mall could smoke with coolly detached nihilism and mall security would be forced to stand by helplessly. The draw will still be there.
Further, in threatening to regulate an industry which to a large extent already regulates itself, Congress is accomplishing nothing. Children are not being protected from anything in that darkened theater that they will not be privy to on any sunlit street in America. Do we really want to equate smoking with abject violence or crack cocaine? Will that send a message about what "personal responsibility" means in a free society for the next generation?
Worse, regulation would set a terrible precedent. Government regulation always has unintended consequences, a point that was not lost on Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti, who told lawmakers that if the rating system were to stand at the whim of special-interest groups, it would not end with a ban on smoking. Overeating is, long term, as deadly as smoking. Will depicting Happy Meals require an "R" rating next? Environmental and animal-rights groups, Valenti pointed out, would love to have their agendas affect ratings as well.
"I want to make sure this rating system does not get cluttered up with a bunch of other people who have equally passionate views that want to be included," Valenti said Tuesday. "I've lived this for 38 years and I understand it very well."
An "R" rating also needs to be taken seriously by the film industry because it makes a large cut into a film's potential audience. To foist such a limiting factor onto a project unnecessarily is a form of politically correct economic warfare.
In the end, it is absolutely true that smoking is dangerous. But so too is rock-climbing or skydiving or not hassling Islamic militants on FBI watch-lists at flight schools. Educating children on the risks of smoking will cut down on under-age smoking, but it will never eliminate it. To believe that sheltering children from something in movie theaters that is perfectly legal at home will suddenly end the teen-smoking problem is merely pie-in-the-sky fantasy. For the government to believe it is their business to make artistic decisions for filmmakers is arrogant. If smoking is not insidious enough to be outlawed completely, then let's allow parents, not Congress, to worry about raising our children.
— Shawn Macomber is a staff writer at The American Spectator.
Yep.
Good morning Gabz ping.
End drinking, screwing and laughing too while they're at it.
Ain't nothing like a little JBT action.
Fun for me but not for thee.
But how would we make our our decisions???
< /sarcasm >
Who votes for these morons? Oregon should be greatly ashamed of themselves.
Perhaps someone will come up with a sure fire way to break the cigarette habit and everyone (including myself) could quit and feel as if we never started in the first place. Of course anyone with a pissants sense knows the government doesn't want that..........why, just look at all the money tobacco products bring into the jerks' coffers. All this crap is just another instance of catering to a fringe group who doesn't enjoy life and doesn't want us to either. I KNOW the risks of my habit........I pay DEARLY for my health insurance but bottom line is it's my business and not the governments.
I couldn't wait to turn 21 so I was officially an adult. Now.........the government STILL wants to treat me as a child. When I turned adult, I put away childish things.
Oh! Believe me! THEY enjoy life "behind their closed doors," all the while laughing at "we little people out here that they think they are 'controlling!"
There are a lot of alcoholics in Congress. Believe it! And a lot of them smoke up a storm as well.
Like I have said: they promise us the moon to get our votes. Once they are in office, they can then stick it to us. Their promises are empty.
Yea - right - intellectual dishonesty is all the left have going for them. Kind of like the old fable of tortise and the scorpion. "It's their nature".
If this group of people really cared about our childrens well being -they wouldn't be pushing homosexuality and sexual promiscuity down our children's throats.
Engaging in homosexuality shaves 30 years off the life expectancy - smoking shaves off 7.
Abortion shaves off 80 years of life expectancy - when considering the life of the unborn child
Sexually transmitted diseases from condom faliure is much worse on the body than cigarette smoking.
It's obvious this writer never spent any time lurking on puff list threads, cause the jihadis been there, done that.
"Like I have said: they promise us the moon to get our votes. Once they are in office, they can then stick it to us. Their promises are empty."
That's the problem. The voters fall for the promises and accept that even if the promises are kept, the benefits to them would come at the detriment of others. They accept it with open arms and don't realize that eventually they will have to pay for promises made to another group!
I'm sorry. I can't view it. :(
Doesn't make sense, does it? The gay's are getting their rights..........abortion is legal, even at the outcry of so many, teen sex and drug abuse is running rampant.............yet MY GOD, WE GOT TO GET RID OF SMOKERS. Just makes me shake my head.
Makes you wonder why "they" do not set better priorities.
I think the true problems started when the Supreme Court decided that the States no longer had the power to recall their Senators and Representatives.
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