Maimon Schwarzschild at The Right Coast digs up a delightful piece of Congressional minutiae from 1985.
Frank Zappa testifies before a Congressional Committee regarding...
...the Parents Music Resource Center, which was either a music censorship group or a watchdog group, depending upon whom you were listening to at the time. The PMRC was founded by then-Senator Al Gore's wife Tipper Gore, and its members included many other political wives, including Mrs James Baker and the wives of five members of the Senate committee.
This is not the kind of thing calculated to advance the chances of Mr. Gore if he has any illusions of competing with the rest of the flock to run as a presidential candidate.
Zappa's statement is a study in vitriol laced with pepper spray.
Taken as a whole, the complete list of PMRC demands reads like an instruction manual for some sinister kind of toilet training program to house-break all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few. Ladies, how dare you?
...Is it proper that the husband of a PMRC nonmember / founder / person sits on any committee considering business pertaining to the blank tape tax or his wife's lobbying organization? Can any committee thus constituted find facts in a fair and unbiased manner? This committee has three that we know about: Senator Danforth, Senator Packwood, and Senator Gore. For some reason, they seem to feel there is no conflict of interest involved.
...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?
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This reminds me of another instance of oxen and goring hailing back to the discussions about filibusters, nuclear options and such. (Be sure to stick with the Saint James version, you know...)No problem is so tangled that our elected representatives cannot come up with a remedy, as that little dust-up shows. I'm sure that if Al Gore chooses to have another try at the office little stuff like this won't really get in the way.
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