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We aren't censors.
-MPAA
We aren't censors.
-PMRC
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when. . .purposes are beneficent. The greatest danger to liberty is the insidious encroachment by men [and women] of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.
-Justice Louis D. Brandeis
As a longtime First Amendment groupie, I am always astonnished by the creative posing and posturing of those who mean to stifle free expression. They launch the most outlandish smokescreens to avoid being branded censors; heaven forbid anyone should think they intend to encroach upon our right to speak, read, see, or listen.
Witness the "civil-rights" line we were fed by Women Against Pornography (WAP) and the Moral Majority when they sought to ban books, magazines, films, paintings, and other works of art. (See Midsection, FILM COMMENT, December 1984.) This grave assault on free speech was unequivocally ended in February 1986 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hudnut v. American Booksellers, summarily affirmed a federal appeals court holding that the antiporn "civil-rights" legislation constituted "thought control" and violated the First Amendment.
Now the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) has resourcefully invented yet another catchy "public interest" pretext for abridging freedom of expression. An organization founded in Washington, D.C. by the wives of the politically powerful (notably Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, and Tipper Gore, wife of Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee), PMRC peddles censorship of rock music under the guise of "consumer protection." To no one's surprise, while this unwholesome dish is served up à la Ralph Nader, it goes down- with the bitter aftertaste of Jerry Falwell.
But the PMRC has a credibility hook, a model already in place they point to and embrace: the Rating System of the Motion Picture Association of America. With simple logic, PMRC proclaims: "If it's good for movies, it's good for records." But is it good for movies? Are ratings good sense- or censorship?
With no doubt of the good sense of their save-the-children crusade ("One day at the breakfast table," explained Pam Howar, PMRC president, "my daughter was listening to the music, and I noticed this punk look about her"), the wellconnected Washington wives condemn rock 'n' roll as "negative," "harmful trash" because...