Culture Warriors, Meet the Parents

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who came within a few hundred votes of being vice president of the United States, visited Los Angeles recently pushing his campaign to prevent violent and sexually explicit entertainment from reaching children.

Lieberman is fond of illustrating support for his efforts via an oft-told anecdote about a grateful mother who urged him to press onward. Parents, he says, “should not have to compete with the popular culture” in raising their children, and there is no reason to believe his intent is anything but sincere.

Still, when it comes to helping parents, it is equally clear politicians are prone to choosing safe political targets and sparing others--notably excluding, in most instances, the obligations of parents themselves.

The day after Lieberman’s coolly received tour of Hollywood, for example, a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study was published that suggests children in day care tend to be more disobedient and aggressive when they enter kindergarten than children with a stay-at-home parent.

Among the implications, by no means conclusive and understandably troubling to many parents, is that day care--a more recent cultural phenomenon than television or movies--could be contributing to social problems involving children. Given the number of parents relying on day care, the argument is a polarizing one, as underscored by Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s mantra “Don’t have them if you’re not going to raise them,” which has raised the hackles of some working mothers.

Whatever the ultimate merits of that argument, however, it is a nonstarter politically--hardly the way to woo soccer moms and affluent two-career families. Few politicians who value their job would stand up at a fund-raiser and say, “Some of you are doing a lousy job raising your kids. Don’t turn the TV into a full-time baby-sitter.

“For those in higher tax brackets, put your briefcase down and pay some attention to your children. If you’re really concerned about what they watch, taking the TV out of their rooms would be a good place to start. And if your kid is spending enough time alone to become unusually proficient at violent video games--or learning how to make bombs--you have been neglecting your responsibilities.”

Indeed, what seems to have been lost or ignored by those waging the so-called cultural war, in regard to movies and television, is the notion of parental responsibility, which was always the handmaiden of any attempt to mitigate the impact of Hollywood’s basest impulses.

Consider the furor in the 1990s over establishing a TV ratings system, which may have begun as a reaction to broadcasting’s excesses but ostensibly focused on providing parents more information to decide which programs were appropriate for their children to watch.

Small wonder, then, that in the wake of adopting such a system, networks were perplexed to come under fire again for the nature of their ratings (pretty much everything receives an innocuous TV-PG, or parental guidance, label)--criticism that hasn’t disappeared in the wake of a revision to the system adding letters cautioning viewers about sex, violence (the “V” in V-chip), dialogue and language.

Sure, television remained awash in innuendo and sexuality, but parents did indeed have more data--if they looked for it--to make an informed choice. In similar fashion, motion-picture industry executives responded to a damning Federal Trade Commission report about their marketing practices with an elaborate plan to curb marketing of R-rated films to children, as well as provide more information regarding why movies received certain ratings.

Yet Lieberman is nevertheless forging ahead with legislation that would empower the FTC to sanction studios for marketing sexually graphic or violent materials to kids.

In short, despite the concessions they have extracted, politicians keep returning to the issue like swallows to Capistrano. This has fostered a prevailing sense within the entertainment industry that these critics cannot be mollified, prompting many to simply dismiss political bashing of Hollywood as a cyclical threat that will surely arise from time to time--the periodic hurricane that quickly blows over--no matter what safeguards are put in place.

While one can argue that the transparent aim of Hollywood’s critics is to curb content--using marketing practices or ratings codes as a means to skirt charges of censorship--Lieberman, at least, insisted in a meeting with Times reporters and editors that he is “a great believer in the 1st Amendment.”

The plain truth, however, is that short of censorship, nothing will effectively dissuade studios from producing material of questionable taste so long as there is a market for it, and there is no reliable method to limit that market without the vigilance of parents. Another part of the problem is that not all parents, let alone childless adults, are of one mind on the issue. During his interview here, Lieberman consistently referred to R-rated movies as “adult-rated,” which reflects scant understanding of the system Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti brought down from Mt. Sinai (to hear Valenti tell it, anyway) in the 1960s.

To be clear, the R does not say that children cannot or should not attend a given movie, only that they must be accompanied by an adult--reflecting the concept, however disingenuous it may be, that children mature at different rates and what might be inappropriate for one 12-year-old isn’t necessarily for another.

Granted, certain movies and TV shows seem ill-advised for any child, but there are those of us in our 30s and 40s who remember seeing films such as “The Godfather,” ’The Exorcist” and “Midnight Cowboy” at a relatively young age, who consumed violent TV westerns as greedily as we devoured McDonald’s hamburgers. While some of these baby boomers are actually the most dedicated parents in restricting their children’s viewing, others harbor a more permissive view.

Listening to Lieberman last week, in fact, brought to mind (in what may be one of the oddest juxtapositions ever) Terri, a World Wrestling Federation sex kitten. The so-called “WWF diva,” in an interview with The Times in September, complained about an experience many of us have no doubt shared: attending an R-rated movie, “Scream 2,” only to have people sit next to her who brought their young children along with them, which is not only potentially traumatic for the kids but annoying to adults around them.

As the mother of a young daughter, Terri--her endorsement of skimpy outfits and plastic surgery notwithstanding--said she carefully monitors what her child watches but pointed out that not everyone exercises such discretion.

“I’m sitting there as a parent thinking, ‘That’s the kid that’s going to stab my kid,’ ” she said. “Parents have to choose at what age their kids can watch this and watch that. I think it’s ridiculous when those damn censorship people try to take away our rights. It’s the parents’ choice, and they have to be smart about it.”

Those comments also underscore the tendency for those on both sides of this debate to demonize and dismiss the other--for the entertainment industry to complain about the puritanical presumptuousness of the “damn censorship people,” while would-be protectors of decency decry Hollywood’s immorality and emphasis on profits over children.

The entertainment industry is “still quite influential in Congress,” as Lieberman put it, but this influence should not be overstated. Elected officials may warm to Hollywood’s money and stars lining up behind candidates at events, but they would much rather have millions of parents line up at the ballot box.

As a result, slamming Hollywood makes far more sense than second-guessing parents, just as it was not politically expedient for the folks who produce MTV’s “Jackass” to come back at critics with the rejoinder they no doubt would prefer--namely, if your 12-year-old child is naive enough to set himself on fire because he saw some idiot do it on TV, something is likely seriously wrong that goes well beyond just television.

A cynic might also observe that entertainment companies are all too willing to throw bones to political critics on matters of content so long as Congress and regulatory agencies continue to rule the industry’s way on matters of real importance to media moguls. These include the sweeping deregulation of ownership rules--sure to spur additional media consolidation--currently in progress. To keep those wheels greased, both sides thus have a vested interest in feeding the illusion that the campaign to curtail Hollywood--and “help parents’--claims the occasional victory.

What remains undeniably true is that no amount of government intervention will keep children, and especially teenagers, from being exposed to dubious material without parents playing an active role; moreover, it logically follows that those parents who carefully monitor their children’s viewing habits are least in need of the industry’s guidance in the first place. Perhaps the biggest fallacy in balancing parental and media responsibility is that it somehow comes down to an either-or debate--that criticizing Hollywood implies parents abdicate their duty to decide what their children watch, or that saying “Let the parents decide” absolves producers and executives of being held accountable for the product they distribute.

There is no applause, however, in saying that issues involving children are too complex to blame on the media alone--that no rating system or technology can shelter children when parents, either neglectful or simply overworked, don’t hold up their end.

Any way you slice it, we’ve come a long way from the kind of movies, music and TV shows Lieberman nostalgically alludes to from his formative years, and he conceded nothing can legislate us back to that black-and-white era.

“The law is not going to take us back to the ‘50s,” Lieberman said, adding of his years in the cultural trenches, “I’ve come to accept the notion that progress comes in small steps.”

That it does. Especially when you walk the safest path, or the road of least political resistance.