Marketing evil?

A Federal Trade Commission report commissioned by Bill Clinton has
blasted the entertainment industry for its "pervasive and aggressive
marketing" of violence to kids between 12 and 18 years old. The
immediate response by the political class was to threaten legislation
unless the industry can clean up its act. Ironically, it is the
Gore-Lieberman ticket which is getting the most mileage out of the
report, showing that "culture war" themes can be manipulated across
party lines.

The report claims that R-rated movies are being "marketed" to
"children" younger than 17 by advertising on World Wide Wrestling. And
80 percent of other violence-ridden movies studied were promoted on
television shows and websites followed by teens. Recording companies
include market segments of people age "12-34" in their marketing
strategies. And there is the great smoking gun: a marketing memo from
one film executive that seeks "the elusive teen target audience ...
between the ages of 12-18."

Congress is already holding hearings, summoning industry executives
to D.C. and putting them on the stand. The Democrats have promised new
regulations to end the practice, and Hillary Clinton is already making
an issue of the report in her New York campaign. Meanwhile, the
Republican ticket decided not to defend free enterprise and instead
tried to outflank the Democrats in their hatred of profiting from
exposing kids to violence.

Because of privacy restrictions and agreements, the report doesn't
actually name the films involved, so we can't evaluate what the FTC
regards as violent and offensive. Recall that Mel Gibson's movie "The
Patriot" was considered obscene and unsuitable for ALL viewing audiences
because it showed a teen-ager firing a musket. This same group finds
old-fashioned children's stories like "Hansel and Gretel" disgustingly
violent, and books by Mark Twain offensive to all civilized standards.

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Indeed, it is not really so odd that left-liberals would celebrate
this report in an attempt to claim the mantle of virtue. Most of them
have already jettisoned the old banners of civil liberty and free-speech
rights. Far more important to them is finding some rationale for
sustaining the size and power of the government's regulatory apparatus.
If the public can be bamboozled into supporting big government by way of
a kulturkampf on behalf of "America's children," leftists will gladly do
it.

Moreover, the left has always made an exception to free speech when
it comes to commercial speech. They believe that the government should
regulate advertising to prevent capitalists from "exploiting" supposedly
weak-minded people. R.J. Reynolds, for example, is granted no right to
speak on behalf of the merit of its tobacco products.

The left is always good for a session of free-enterprise bashing, no
matter what the excuse. An FTC report that demonizes those who profit
from the sale of videos and movies is as good a club as any. Advocating
the right of the entertainment industry to hawk their products however
they want is considered an indefensible position.

And yet, there are many unstated assumptions behind the report that
turn out to be false. One is that government has the best interests of
our kids in mind, and that free enterprise does not and cannot.

It only takes a passing glance at the public-school curriculum to
recognize that this isn't true. Explicit sex education, the earlier and
more polymorphous the better, has been a major priority of government
schools for decades. More recently, it has been considered progressive
and pro-child to hand out condoms to teens the government now tells us
cannot watch movies of shootouts.

The government has been marketing its political propaganda to kids
since the inception of the public-school system. Pro-green politics and
left-wing readings of American political life are the norm. Every
sensible parent with a kid in public school finds himself having to
deprogram his child from this nonsense for years afterwards. Say what
you will about the entertainment industry, it is not running tax-funded
reeducation camps that consume 12 years of a child's life.

Neither does the government want to limit its marketing of evil to
kids age 7-17. The government wants them earlier and earlier. Every
self-respecting left-liberal, and many Republicans too, want
government-funded daycare to begin soon after birth, the better to
diminish the parents' influence over the kids and enhance the
government's.

As for the marketing of violence to youth in particular, consider the
government's advertisements to join the military. The ads feature young
men and women zooming around in bombers and otherwise operating weapons
of mass destruction. These ads aren't intended to get a child to put out
$3 bucks for a movie rental, but to sign away his life in the service of
real imperial adventures.

The FTC report and the political response to it are really part of
the same ideological package. When the chairman of the FTC says he
doesn't want his agency to be "the thought police," he is inadvertently
giving the game away. The goal is to take more control away from the
parents and vest it in the feds. The attack on the industry itself,
which politically naive parents are likely to appreciate, is the most
viable means for doing this.

But wouldn't it be okay if the FTC simply outlawed the "marketing" of
R-rated movies to kids? Well, this idea, that the government understands
the intentions behind every marketing decision, is slippery. The FDA
decided that Camel cigarettes were being marketed to kids because its
logo featured a cartoon character, for example. Once the government has
the power to declare what group is and isn't being targeted, the game is
over.

For example, it is absurd that the FTC concludes that an ad on World
Wide Wrestling constitutes marketing to kids. Do adults not watch these
shows? What percentage of the audience can be under the age of 18 before
the government decides what commercials can and cannot be aired? If
there is the slightest chance that teen-agers will be watching, will the
government be given veto power over every commercial? In its discussion
of magazine ads, the report uses words like a "majority" (50 percent
plus 1) and "substantial" (left undefined) teen readership.

Another implicit assumption is that the marketing plans of ad
agencies always work. This is also ridiculous. The glory of Wagner
operas could be the main message of every issue of Seventeen without
affecting the sales of tickets to the Met. And while marketing can be a
great help in getting the word out, limiting the promotion of
rock-'em-sock-'em video games to National Geographic isn't going to keep
kids from liking them. Deterministic relationships between promotion and
sales do not exist in human affairs.

And, in fact, the entertainment industry is not being accused of
creating an artificial demand for products but rather catering to a
demand that already exists. In other words, it is being accused of doing
what free enterprise does best: getting goods and services to those who
want them. From the perspective of any business, the goal is to find the
market segment most interested in the product.

You may say a 16-year-old kid shouldn't want to watch gory shootouts,
but then you are dealing with the complicated interplay between moral
precepts and adolescent impulses -- territory only parents have the
competence to navigate. It's not enough to say that kids shouldn't watch
violent things. Maybe Dunkin' Donuts shouldn't be permitted to market to
fat people, or Budweiser to sell to drunks, or Gateway to sell laptops
to workaholics, or Makeup.com to sell to promiscuous women, or
Amazon.com to grant "one-click" ordering to fanatic readers like me.

Unless we are prepared to erect a totalitarian state with the power
to approve or disapprove every cultural message we encounter (which not
even Mao's China could pull off), we must let business be free to
promote its wares in the most profitable way.

Yes, parents face huge problems in keeping their children free of
corruption. That is true now, and it has been true in every age. Now, as
always, it is a huge error to turn this job over to the state, the
greatest corrupter of youth ever known.

In a free society, it is the job of parents, not regulators and
politicians, to guard what influences their kids. Now that the left has
taken up the banner of decency in a new and twisted episode of the
culture wars of the 1990s, it is more important than ever for the rest
of us to remember that.