Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
The constitutional scholar and director of the Madison Program at Princeton, Robert P. George, just posted a particularly provocative comment on Facebook. As you'll see, Robby's comment raises, and very definitely takes sides in, one of the permanent disputes in conservatism: liberty versus morality, or freedom from coercion versus the freedom to live in a decent society. To quote him:
Let me see if I've got this straight. The suits in the entertainment industry massively enrich themselves by marketing Lady Gaga to eleven year old girls, and we're supposed show that we're worldly, urbane, sophisticated people who haven't the slightest concern about conduct like this. Then we're shocked--shocked!--by drug use, provocative dressing, foul language, lewd conduct, meanness, and sexual promiscuity by tweens and young teens. Please count me among the simple, backward, unsophsticated hicks and rubes who think we should hold the entertainment business accountable the way we hold the tobacco industry and environmental polluters accountable.
Since "the way we hold the tobacco industry and environmental polluters accountable" is by way of laws, regulations, and fines--that is, by way of government coercion--Robby is calling here, if I'm reading him correctly, for expanding the government's power over the music industry, television, and Hollywood.
Rob Long? Good people of the Ricochetti? What think?
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Comments:
Jun '11
Re: Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
I want government, especially the Washington DC brand of government, out of my life as much as possible. I want whole cabinet departments gone and never heard from again. The notion that I'd be in favor of welcoming them into regulating the content of the culture is unthinkable.
During the Bush years I always applied the Hillary/Reno test to things proposed by the Republicans. If it sounded kinda OK I'd ask, "But would you be for it if President Hillary Clinton and Vice President Janet Reno were in charge?" Update that to Obama/Holder. Would I give them the power to call a C.J. Box novel a forbidden book because of a foul word? No, of course not. (Besides we'd know they were banning him because they monitored Ricochet and found out what Mr. Box believes.)
Books, comic books, music, films, TV, radio, the Internet... I want the government to have less influence in these areas, not more. Frankly, the idea that the EPA and anti-tobacco lawsuits are a rationale for regulating the creative culture is absurd. The current out-of-control EPA should be a model for just how wrong this idea is!
Jun '10
Re: Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
Steven M.
Joseph Stanko
How about a law simply requiring that online porn sites check ID and validate their customers are over 18 before selling them porn?
There are a lot of reasons why it wouldn't work. One of them being that the idea of paying for porn is an outmoded concept. It's available everywhere, for free. Usually it's ad-based.
My proposal would apply to "free" porn sites as well.
We wouldn't allow tobacco companies to give free cigarettes to children in the hopes of getting them addicted and generating future customers. Why should we treat pornographers any differently?
Jun '12
Re: Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
No regulation necessary. Just make private right of action for corrupting the morals of youth and the problem will take care of itself.
Dec '10
Re: Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
Joseph Stanko
We wouldn't allow tobacco companies to give free cigarettes to children in the hopes of getting them addicted and generating future customers. Why should we treat pornographers any differently?
If you were doing your job as a parent, it wouldn't make any difference at all.
How about we pass a law to force people to pay X hours of attention to their children every day? They would be required to keep logs of how they spent their time, and account for every hour of their day with time slips, receipts, etc. Just for verification that they're doing what they say they're doing.
You understand.
That'd probably fix more of society's problems than banning porn AND cigarettes outright.
You're on board with that form of govt coercion, right?
Remember, it's for the children.
Aug '10
Re: Robert George: We Should Treat the Entertainment Industry the Way We Treat Polluters
Someone from Directv called the other day with a great offer on NFL Sunday ticket, HBO and Cinemax. I stopped him in midsentence: "do you record the customer's replies ?" .
" Yessir , we do."
"Okay ,well you tell management that I regard HBO and Cinemax as open sewers and try to keep my children from falling into them."
He almost chuckled... but thanked me and finished the spiel. I thanked him as well.
It is about as effective as we can be with this kind of junk.
Now about the rest of the channels, the other 547 ?