Shame is an exotic concept for the people who aim this garbage at kids. Yet there's more than a whiff of Big Brother in some of the responses to this week's Federal Trade Commission report that lays out the entertainment industry's sleazy record. Politicians don't wait for election years to spout censorship. They do seem louder about it during campaigns. If the vice president, a former newspaper reporter, genuinely believes in free speech, he surely knows he can't have this both ways.
Politicians are cynical and practical.
They advocate or enact unconstitutional laws, knowing or at least hoping the courts will save us in the end. I have my queasy moments in defending the entertainment industry's free speech. These are the people, after all, who put the arm on Congress to enact grossly restrictive copyright laws that end up erasing other people's free speech rights. The irony is undoubtedly lost on the entertainment moguls. For the kind of sludge they sell and the way they sell it, however, they deserve contempt.