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. . .
compared to sports expenditures. Your children have a right to
know that something besides pop music exists.
lt is unfortunate that the PMRC would rather dispense governmentally
sanitized heavy metal music than something more uplifting.
Is this an indication of PMRC's personal taste or just another
manifestation of the low priority this administration has placed on
education for the arts in America?
The answer, of course, is neither. You cannot distract people
from thinking about an unfair tax by talking about music appreciation.
For that you need sex, and lots of it.
The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise,
opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control
programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the
next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all
material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless
children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?
Record ratings are frequently compared to film ratings. Apart
from the quantitative difference, there is another that is more
important: People who act in films are hired to pretend. No matter
how the film is rated, it will not hurt them personally.
Since many musicians write and perform their own material and
stand by it as their art, whether you like it or not, an imposed
rating will stigmatize them as individuals. How long before
composers and performers are told to wear a festive little PMRC arm
band with their scarlet letter on it?
Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in
my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
Freedom of speech, freedom of religious thought, and the right
to due process for composers, performers and retailers are imperiled
if the PMRC and the major labels consummate this nasty bargain.
Are we expected to give up article 1 so the big guys can collect
an extra dollar on every blank tape and 10 to 25 percent on tape
recorders? What is going on here? Do we get to vote on this tax?
I think that this whole matter has gotten completely blown out
of proportion, and I agree with Senator Exon that there is a very
dubious reason for having this event. I also agree with Senator
Exon that you should not be wasting time on stuff like this,
because from the beginning I have sensed that it is somebody's hobby
project.
Now, I have done a number of interviews on television. People
keep saying, can you not take a few steps in their direction, can
you not sympathize, can you not empathize? I do more than that at
this point. I have got an idea for a way to stop all this stuff and a
way to give parents what they really want, which is information,
accurate information as to what is inside the album, without
providing a stigma for the musicians who have played on the album or
the people who sing it or the people who wrote it. And I think that
if you listen carefully to this idea that it might just get by all of
the constitutional problems and everything else.
As far as I am concerned, I have no objection to having all of the
lyrics placed on the album routinely, all the time. But there is a
little problem. Record companies do not own the right automatically
. . .
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