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David Carr and Jill Stewart

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from: Jill Stewart

Hollywood's Evil Blather

Posted Thursday, June 17, 1999, at 6:04 PM ET

Dear Cousin of Jack Valenti,

None of this matters! Look at your own sentence: "Virginia ... passed one gun a month, and they started to shop elsewhere." Well, duh! One-gun-a-month purchase restrictions will change nothing. It's a feel-good salve without any active ingredients. Like campaign finance "reform."

Same thing with gun show restrictions. Who the hell cares if the gun shows get shut down, when anybody who bothers to call the cops knows that a high percentage (and in some cities, the vast percentage) of guns used in crimes are stolen from law-abiding citizens' homes, and from less law-abiding people's cars. I don't recall the figure for guns floating around in private ownership in the United States, but it's many, many millions of guns. And a gun is permanent. It will fire and work for 100 years. If we stopped all guns sales today, the carnage and crime would continue, and many millions of existing guns would continue to circulate among criminals.

I don't have a solution. But the Democrats spending years of useless whining on stuff that clearly is nonsense is criminal. If they just shut the hell up and thought for once (I realize thinking is the weak suit for the Democrats), maybe they would have arrived at some basic truths by now.

Now, as to Hyde, you have just created the single best description I have ever read of him. God, you are good/cruel/inspired. I mean, silver-topped-pear-of-a-human-being? And I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the Republican attack on free speech. What a doomed plan. Every time those sweaty House Republicans get a perfect chance to woo the public with bold ideas, they decide they have to scam the public with wacko ideas instead. Keeps backfiring on them. I find it humorous.

Here's what I would like to see from Jack Valenti, Hollywood, and the TV industry: Stop the lying bullshit. Clinton wants to investigate whether the industry specifically targets teens with violence, mayhem, and suicidal fantasies. Remember the Tobacco Nazis, swearing before God and Henry Waxman that they didn't think cigarettes were addictive? Hollywood is up to the same butt-protecting, evil blathering. Don't confuse these guys with decent people just because they created Leave It to Beaver. Money is what they desperately want and need.

Clinton can save a lot of time by dumping his little study and getting a few TV and movie moguls really drunk the next time he's in Bel-Air. If Clinton ups the camaraderie by regaling them with drunken tales of the hotties he's had, then Hollywood will sing like banshees about their own moral depravity.

It will sound something like this: Hollywood specifically targets teens with violence, and even designs violence to appeal to teen demographic groups by race, gender, and income, in order to get the biggest bang for its buck.

It's getting late, my friend. If I don't hear from you, I will know you had to attend to other duties. It's been a tremendous pleasure sparring with you and laughing with you. I hope all goes well for your family. And if you are ever in Los Angeles ... Well, you know.

Your friend,
Jill

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Jill Stewart

Hollywood's Evil Blather

Posted Thursday, June 17, 1999, at 6:04 PM ET
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David Carr is the editor of the Washington City Paper. Jill Stewart is a political columnist at New Times Los Angeles.
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