AN EDITORIAL BY JON CHRISTIAN RYTER

Congress Addresses VIOLENCE IN MOVIES....OR IS IT JUST A GAME OF RHETORIC?

According to the June 9 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Congress has decided to address the issue of violence in movies and video games with legislation introduced on June 8 in the House of Representatives by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde. Congress, it seems, does not need an 18 month study in exchange for $2 million in political contributions from the movie industry to act on a volatile issue (as does our illustrious President--who can't even seem to define what is, or is not, sex let alone what is, or is not, violence).

However, the question of how to define obscene violence in movies and video tapes seems to be an elusive one even for our ever compromising Congress. According to the Wall Street Journal article, the proposed legislation will mandate "...a cap of 50 killings per film."

The proposed limit immediately brought a chorus of screams from the defenders of celluloid entertainment who raised the question of how those new "standards" would apply to movies like Saving Private Ryan, Pulp Fiction and Matrix. It appears that even before the legislation became legislation, the socialists who control what we will view (or boycott) in the movie theaters and their socialist friends in Congress feel there should be an exemption for those movies that are planned to be blockbuster events that also have the potential of delivering mucho dinero in licensing fees.

Matrix, if you recall, was the movie described by name by one of the Columbine survivors who said the event that transpired as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered the school came, frame by frame, right out of the movie Matrix.

If Hyde gets his way--which clearly he won't--the new legislation will ban "obscenely" violent movies, violent video games...and books written for children that contain violence. Interestingly though, the penalties--jail terms--for showing violent movies or selling video games containing violence, would be assessed not against those who manufacture or produce these items but the retailers or theater owners who show or sell them.

In reality, although the Congressional rhetoric suggests that an out-and-out ban of obscenely violent movies and videos is in the offering, nothing could be farther from the truth. The legislation will merely target children under the age of 17. The ban would prevent the sale or marketing of violently explicit movies and videos containing "...the kind of violence that appeals to the prurient, morbid, or shameful interest of children without social redeeming value for children." Now, that is a mouthful of rhetoric that says nothing except "vote for me, I voted against violence in movies and videos."

Okay...that may keep the producers of celluloid entertainment out of the courts screaming violations of their 1st Amendment rights to denigrate the value of human life. I vaguely remember the 1st Amendment. It used to protect the Constitutional right of people to read their Bibles in public places and pray to the God who created mankind. Today, the 1st Amendment protects only those who wish to promote debauchery, immorality and pornography under the guise of art.

It would seem to me as a layman who doesn't waste a penny on going to movies or buying video games of any type, that if the Congress and our President (who is forever seeking votes even when he's not running for office) wanted to eliminate the influence of violence on our kids, that they could do it very easily.

Since you cannot buy guns until you are 21, I would suggest that movies that display graphic violence, would carry a rating of V21...and those wishing admission into those movie theaters would have to prove they are at least 21 years of age.

As for "penalties," it would seem appropriate, if we are indeed attempting to curb violence on the streets and in the schools of America, that the same prison terms handed out for the illegal purchase of a gun should be handed out to those teaching our children how to become violent members of society. And, since the courts have decreed that gun manufacturers can be held financially liable for violence committed with the products they create, the same liability--in the form of prison sentences--should be afforded the producers and directors of violent movies as well as the owners of the movie theater chains.

"Rockers" like Marilyn Manson (and the recording companies who publish their trash), whose trashy dribble would be banned to children under 17, should be held financially liable for the crimes committed by those who listen to the trash they loosely call music.

But it is ludicrous to imagine that this will solve the problem. The problem was caused long before the first gun was smuggled into the first school. The problem hit critical mass in 1965 when Madeline Murray O'Hair (then Madeline Murray) sued the Baltimore Board of Education in 1965 because her son, Bill, was forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance which contained the phrase "under God." While the Bible had been under attack in the public schools of the United States since 1947 (as part of the UN agenda to destroy family values, openly discussed in the first annual UNESCO report in 1946), Murray v. Baltimore Board of Education) expanded the "wall of separation" to include every walk of life in the United States and effectively erased God from mainstream America, starting the morality decline in America that ended with open warfare in our schools as the void created by removing God from the minds of our children was filled with a humanistic contempt for human life.

When he was asked how Congress would define obscene violence, Hyde replied: "It's hard to define a level of violence, but not impossible. Depictions of sado-masochism get there. Mel Gibson is a wonderful actor, but his most recent movie, Payback, is sheer violence. The movie Matrix is more blood and guts. I'd say that any movie that has more than 50 killings is pushing the envelope."

But Senator Joe Lierberman said it best: "...[W]hen we see Natural Born Killers and video games like Carmageddon and listen to Marilyn Manson, we're there."

We are there. The question is, how do we get back? Or, can we? Since the elimination of God from society was viewed as the necessary first step at destroying the patriotic fervor needed to abrogate national sovereignty, it would seem we cannot go back. If we cannot go back, where do we go from here?

We have arrived at the gates of Sodom, and its stench has reached the portals of Heaven.

Questions? E-mail Jon here