CORRESPONDENCE

...Then, with sharper teeth, move on to a bigger target...

...Grass-roots organizations that boycott advertisers are more effective...

...Conservatives tend to view these dubious and despicable sorts as saddle partners to the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse...

...Most oppose censorship, with the exception of Irving Kristol, one of the very first to urge it publicly...

...Hollywood, the media, and acade-mia are all closed clubs to which conservatives need not apply, and for good reason...

...Above all, let us not give the impression that the Constitution itself prohibits the regulation of the mass media...

...The censorship of the marketplace is the only kind that will both solve the problem and keep us true to our ideals as a democracy and as conservatives...

...Still, there is a certain romance to the notion of furtively reading my samizdat copy of The Weekly Standard by candlelight in a dark basement...

...That last bit is particularly ironic—why fret the destruction of freedom and call for it at the same time...

...An exception is William Bennett, who calls himself "a virtual absolutist on the First Amendment," and for whom the main objection to censorship is that the American people are dead set against it...

...These include the lewd and obscene, the profane . . . [S]peech . . . of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality...

...Without credible threats of regulation, congressional shaming will have little effect on Hollywood and the networks, which are among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most hard-boiled, pub-lic-good-be-damned businesses in the world...

...Again, no one except the liberal academic subculture takes these things seriously...

...Therefore, the problem lies not solely with the producers of filth, but with the purveyors of filth as well...

...Tom Castle claims that the moral climate in America is not deteriorating and that incidents like the Columbine High School shooting are slight departures ("blips," he calls them) from our general good behavior...

...DAN FENDEL HOLLYWOOD, CA The only way to clean up the media is to hit the CEOs in the shorts— cut their revenues with effective nationwide boycotts orchestrated with concentrated money and organization...

...Neither protection embodies "expression" and neither embodies pornography or obscenity...

...There is no way of avoiding this task of definition, whatever the approach taken...

...The key to victory: Focus like a laser on just one relatively weak entity—a struggling movie studio—and boycott it until it is either bankrupted or reformed...

...TOM CASTLE OAKWOOD, OH David Lowenthal's advocacy of censorship to stem society's ills is so repugnant that it's like treating an infection with mercury or arsenic...

...They are, in every sense of the word, elitists...

...Furthermore, it is the only kind of censorship that works...

...If we could get them to take those issues seriously again—indeed, if we could even get them to use the word "morality"— we would be well on our way to recapturing our culture...

...MARCO GILLIAM SAN ANTONIO, TX Masses of people do not come to their senses, only individuals do...

...hence, the gloomy prognostications that we are "slouching" or that outrage has died...

...Littleton and other recent tragedies, horrible as they are, are blips on a media radar screen that monitors the violent behavior of the quarter billion people who share our nation...

...William Bennett's argument that we should ostracize the producers of filth and make them social pariahs only goes so far...

...RICHARD E. SINCERE ARLINGTON, VA Professor David Lowenthal makes a compelling case for censorship, a case that needs to be made...

...JOHN F. WASIK WAUCONDA, IL William J. Bennett is right: The key to changing what's abhorrent in the popular media is to move public opinion and thus the marketplace—to label it abhorrent, rather than censoring it, as David Lowenthal suggests...

...John Wasik says violence and sex are rampant in the media and "betray all of the decent values we try to teach our children...

...If a quarter billion people less two teens in Colorado and a nutcase in California are well behaved, an epidemic is emphatically not at hand, a radical reduction in personal liberty is not called for, the nation is not on "an accelerating descent into barbarism" (the hyperbole is scarcely to be believed here), and the destruction of "free society itself" is not to be feared...

...The opponents of censorship object not primarily on constitutional grounds, but because they fear it...

...How can I corrupt the youth of America today...

...Coalitions led by upstanding, respectable celebrities such as Steve Allen have more potential...

...Could these comedic portrayals of alcoholism possibly get a "go" in any network or studio executive suite today...

...Lowenthal briefly entertains the arguments against the regulation of the mass media—that "censorship is dangerous, ineffective, unconstitutional, and inconsistent with liberal democ-racy"—but again he doesn't even consider the possibility that the American moral climate is not deteriorating in the first place...

...But to get started, a healthy percentage of apathetic, preoccupied average Americans must be repeatedly educated, as in a professional political campaign, using all available media...

...Conservatives and liberals alike should know by now that in both open and closed societies, people are going to get what they want, for good or ill, by hook or by crook...

...What happens when the censors are appointed by, or friendly to, the likes of Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin...

...Is it any wonder why the media are predominantly left-of-center and always have been...

...But it seems all too likely that the result would be full-scale, all-out censorship of everything that conservative Americans want, rather than any kind of censorship of the things that conservative Americans rightfully hate and fear...

...No Hollywood mogul sits in his office and says, "Wow...

...With few exceptions, conservatives are not and have not been interested in entertainment and the arts...

...This is true for a couple of basic conservative reasons...

...And the entertainment industry is no exception...

...JONATHAN ATHENS COLUMBUS, OH DAVID LOWENTHAL RESPONDS: Let's see what the points of agreement and disagreement are among the four original commentators, the present letter-writers, and myself...

...We have turned the other cheek for years and have been slapped silly by these gold-grabbing molesters of our children's minds...

...Seth Leibsohn, with his wise reminder of relevant constitutional law...

...We are taught to be slow to anger, not to never get angry...

...Pornography, drugs, alcohol, illegal guns, gambling, prostitution, abortions, you name it...

...Notice that all these approaches presume we can ascertain the standards by which to judge media excesses, otherwise it would be impossible to know at what point the excesses cease...

...The rest would soon get the picture and clean up their act...

...Certainly our Founders knew what they meant and wanted to mean when they wrote both "speech" and "press" into our First Amendment...

...A recent example of how a change in the political and social opinions of Americans has changed the media is found in the area of alcohol abuse: Remember the movie Arthur...

...The best approach to monitor and diminish the appalling anti-social messages in the media is still a free-market strategy that true conservatives should embrace: If there's something objectionable in the marketplace, don't buy it, watch it, or patronize the advertisers supporting it...

...An economic decision is a much more powerful decision than a moral one that rips at the core of our constitutional freedoms...

...This will depend, in turn, on the remaining good moral sense of the people themselves...

...SETH LEIBSOHN WASHINGTON, DC David Lowenthal's "The Case for Censorship" is an unfortunate example of thoughtless writing...

...Who listens to the likes of Marilyn Manson, Snoop Doggy Dog, and Nine Inch Nails...

...Absolutely not—thanks to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other public outcries, we as a nation have decided that being a drunk simply isn't funny anymore...

...Those of us who decried HillaryCare as the confiscation of a huge chunk of the national economy by the federal government surely don't want an even larger percentage of the national attention span, mindset, and opinion-forming mechanism equally purloined by the feds, do we...

...It is a romance I hope never to encounter...

...As for the possibility (raised by Richard Sincere) that such contemporary excesses as political correctness will inevitably corrupt any system of regulation, that will depend on whether our legislatures can distinguish between such excesses and the legitimate object of making the mass media less noxious to a decent and moral citizenry...

...Make a stand by rubbing the corporate noses of those who make these decisions in their own misguided dirty work...

...Dan Fendel speaks of "decay and degradation in much of the media," Marco Gilliam of the "gold-grabbing molesters of our children's minds," and Jonathan Athens of the mass media as "producers of filth...

...Ultimately, the people who will have the most profound impact are the people who are not buying what the Left is selling...

...Better still, who defends the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton...

...The media reacted, and we no longer see such portrayals...

...Government-directed censorship is not the right way or the best way to curtail the flood of filth Hollywood calls entertainment...

...If the experience of speech codes on college campuses is any indication, government censorship will simply give us political correctness run amok—and many more people than college students and faculty will be affected...

...It is important for society, in its organized capacity, to face up to such threats to its health and existence...

...Movies which lampoon or attack religion are box-office bombs, television programs that try to legitimize homosexuality are at the bottom of the ratings, and celebrities who flaunt their dirty laundry get zero respect—except among their own kind, of course...

...If that's gone, we are too...

...However, he writes, "We cannot be sure that the first stout defenders of the press . . . would make an exception for movies and television were they alive today...

...Whether involving the regulation of television at the federal level (through the FCC or a similar body) or of movies in the various states and cities, it will have to declare general principles to be applied to particular cases...

...But if we were to somehow censor these messages, who would appoint the censor...

...They, like the Clintons and their minions, have no shame or sense of decency to begin with...

...Neither is the case...

...If anything, Hollywood and the media know mar-keting—what kind of sound-bites sound best and what kind of images get the most play—but that's about it...

...Or Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan...

...Much of the popular antipathy to censorship rests on this sedulously cultivated but completely false impression...

...They feel no shame and so far have not reached out for redemption...

...An obvious problem with this comparison—I can choose my reaction to immorality, but I can't choose my reaction to, say, carbon monoxide—is of course never mentioned, nor, I'm sure, did it ever cross Lowenthal's mind, so righteous is his conviction...

...Or Al Gore and Ralph Nader...

...and possibly Jeremy Rabkin, who is "sympathetic to efforts to limit the most graphic depictions of sex and violence in the mass media...

...The recent Appeal to Hollywood by 56 eminent citizens refers to our "increasingly toxic popular culture...

...Remember the comedian Foster Brooks...

...The Lichter studies of Hollywood and media elitists reveal some not-so-surprising details about the image-makers and newsmakers: They are out of touch and out of sync with the public...

...This leads us to look at the other side of the social morality debate or culture wars...

...Would that we could return to the verdict of a unanimous Supreme Court in 1942 (a Court that included Black, Douglas, and Frankfurter) that understood "there are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem...

...This is why Professor Lowen-thal's argument for censorship doesn't fly...

...No doubt there is a strong desire among many Americans to see a return to conservative values and principles in American media...

...Compared with these alternatives, legislation has certain advantages...

...Those granting the gravity of the situation call for serious measures...

...Allow me to sum up in one sentence my fears: I don't want Tom Daschle, David Bonior, and their ilk deciding what can be published in The Weekly Standard, the Washington Times, or any other publication...

...What points of view would be represented by the censor...

...and those who guess right are rewarded...

...Then another...

...Fear not, Bill Johnson: David Bonior will never decide what can be published in this or any other independent journal, because they constitute precisely the kind of "press" the First Amendment was intended to protect...

...But these industries realize that congressional action can put them out of business...

...For instance, Lowenthal compares physical pollution to "moral pollution," a strained analogy at best, but this hardly concerns him...

...If the mass media can be likened to poison, filth, or pollution, they should in principle be treated by the various political communities, not just by private individuals and groups, however numerous...

...If they meant all forms of communication or even entertainment, or the broad swath of protection the courts now call "expression," they would not have found the need to protect both "speech" and "press...

...Most every obscenity and pornography case dealing with broadcast media and movies cites the First Amendment protection of "speech," not "press...

...Academia is worse...

...From academia come hare-brained notions such as multiculturalism, political correctness, gender studies, identity politics, and so on...

...But we live in a democracy, and our leaders change from time to time...

...But let us try these alternatives and see how far they get...

...The others acknowledge that moral pollution by the media is real enough...

...With only two exceptions, we agree that the mass media pose a grave problem...

...Jeremy Rabkin thinks my emphasis on them misplaced...

...In short, rather than censorship, once we grab the body politic by its heart and mind, its eyeballs and ears and wallet will follow the only truly conservative means to this worthwhile end...

...Not so long ago, social interests in order and morality were taken seriously by the courts...

...And it will not be restricted to criticizing only the most egregious instances of mass media harm, as is likely with boycotts, shaming, and the rest...

...William Bennett suggests that Congress shame media heads the way it shames the heads of the tobacco and gun industries...

...To the Founders, there was a difference between the two: Speech was speech and press was press...

...Lowenthal need not go this far...

...if someone wasn't buying, someone wouldn't be selling...

...It is time to legally slap the spit out of them...

...His cure is worse than the disease...

...A more balanced article would have at least acknowledged that crime rates have plummeted, teen pregnancy is down dramatically, and moral barometers like racial tolerance are on the rise...

...Who watches Jerry Springer...

...The task for those of us who rightly see decay and degradation in much of the media is to point it out—as Bennett and Charlton Heston did when they read obscene and misog-ynistic rap lyrics at a Time-Warner stockholders meeting...

...BILL JOHNSON NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA Censorship may be a fine idea if those imposing it are friendly to the values of William Bennett, Richard John Neuhaus, Steve Allen, and David Lowenthal...

...Irving Kristol touched on this in his comment that the majority of people are too busy working, worrying, and drinking, and that others are busy insulating their families from decadence...

...They say, "What will people buy...

...In spite of these ready examples, perhaps more important for conservatives is this question: Why would anyone who seeks a smaller and less invasive government ever want to hand over to a government censor the keys to this much power...

...any clear-thinking conservative will be able to see that...

...Instead of censorship, opponents favor either the operation of the free market to get rid of media excesses, recourse to organized boycotts, or forthright public attacks (including attacks in Congress) to shame media heads into altering their ways...

...As we do, I suggest that the door be kept explicitly open for censorship of the movies and regulation of television as the ultimate threat behind the pleadings and sham-ings...

...First, if we believe in the market, we must believe that demand will change supply...

...The Lord overturned the tables of the money-changers and drove them from the temple...

...True, violence and sexism are rampant in the media and betray all of the decent values we try to teach our children...