From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: the US elections...
Organization: LLNL
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:26:04 GMT

In article <2AFEADF4.29425@news.service.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In article <19043@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> darsie@eecs.ucdavis.edu (Richard Darsie) writes:
: In article <gate.LD0PTB1w165w@pil.UUCP>, alizard@pil.UUCP writes:

: > WE WON!!! As I type, Bush is conceding. An important battle has
: > been won. The war for America's future has NOT been won.

	And I hope that Clinton doesn't lick the boots of the Far
Right when in office...

: > 2. Censorship. Tippe Gore is the Vice President's wife. She is
: > potentially much more dangerous than Marilyn Quayle, especially
: > as her husband, unlike Dan Quayle, is going to be allowed input
: > at the highest levels of power.
: 
: How many times does this have to be said:  LABELS WARNING OF
: POTENTIALLY OBJECTIONABLE OR OBSCENE CONTENT DO NOT CONSTITUTE
: CENSORSHIP!!  

>People are just not used to seeing them on records; nobody shrieks
>bloody murder when new movie ratings come out because well, they've
>always been rated.  And hell, some movies won't even let you IN if
>you're too young!  The records only have warning labels.

	The reason that people seem willing to live with movie ratings
is that they have been around for some time now.

	Personally, if I wanted to get into the rating business, I'd
try to mention _why_ something was rated the way it was. And to
establish categories of things that some people find distasteful like:

	Sex/Nudity

	Violence

	Gross-outs

	Bad language

	Thus, one could see if the movie has a lot of people blowing
each other to bits or being total potty mouths (like Eddie Murphy, for
example) or whatever.

	And someone who can't stand people going naked or else bloody
violence will know what to look for.

	The big problem I have with present-day ratings systems is
that they are not specific enough. And the advocates of such things
seem too much like "I know it when I see it", which is how one judge
answered the question of how he would define hard-core pornography.


	It would be amusing to see how a lot of classic literature
fares. I'm sure that the Bible would get at least an R rating from
some of _its_ contents, for instance.


	I have other problems with trying to defend the likes of
Tipper Gore, since she and others like her don't seem to want _any_
open discussion or presentation of sexuality.

	[Discussions on:

	Why naked women and not naked men? (Me: have you ever seen
some ancient Greek art? There's naked men galore. I guess it's a
matter of one's taste in sex objects, and I can see why JMC is tired
of seeing the only sex objects being women in too many cases.)

	Why Tipper Gore is considered a joke. (Me: She seems too much
like some bored, uptight housewife, so that's why she is looked down upon)

	On book-thumping (the Bible, the Constitution, etc.) (Me: I
agree that book-thumping is a lousy defense of anything, even freedom
of speech, but I think that this freedom is worth defending since it
would be freedom of _everybody's_ speech, not just whatever happens to
be Politically Correct.)
	]

>Now awaiting all the nonsense and accusations about how I support
>censorship and am a Tipper groupie and a castrating, man-hating bitch. 

	I wouldn't accuse you of anything like that. You just seem to
have a chip on your shoulder. Have you ever thought of becoming some
kind of activist in something?