Clinton on Hollywood

Conservatives make clumsy censors. They swing a club. Liberals are smoother, and much more effective. They apply their touchy-feely anesthetic and glide a scalpel across the arts with such skill that any pain is felt much later.

President Clinton has finally added his voice to the Neo-Stalinist efforts of Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to bend Hollywood to a new role (Dec. 5). Now we are not here to divert and entertain, but to indoctrinate. And, despite what should be their better instincts, the moguls of Hollywood have not recoiled at this call for self-censorship. What a cowardly lot!

It’s easy to envision the new, unspoken chill as it spreads from development meeting to script to the movie screen itself. As a screenwriter, I can only conclude that we are in for dark times indeed.

FRANK MILLER

Los Angeles

The Times featured President Clinton’s appeal to Hollywood to reduce violence. Your Dec. 5 Calendar section ran a full-page ad for “Rescue Me,” a Cannon Pictures film that depicts a boy (sans helmet) on the back of a motorcycle brandishing a handgun. The ad reads “a totally cool adventure.” It will unfortunately be a long fight before gratuitous violence is reduced in films.

Lockers are being taken out of high schools so that certain students won’t have a place to put their weapons. Maybe it is time for adults who make entertainment dollars off of these kids to act responsibly.

KIM ORLANDO

Los Angeles

Why is that President Clinton is lauded for asking Hollywood to clean up its act but the Rev. Donald Wildmon is accused of censorship for requesting the very same thing?

ROBERT V. NUGENT

Diamond Bar