Senator Speaks Out for Parents

The lyrics by one of pop music’s most decorated singers were enlarged and propped up on easels in the Senate hearing room, a rap artist’s musings about raping and killing his mother.

The song was so rife with misogynistic obscenities that Sen. Sam Brownback had a hard time reading it aloud to a roomful of lawmakers, so he muddled through with substitutes like “b-word.” Sort of embarrassing for a conservative Kansas Republican, born-again Methodist and father of five.

But then, that was the point.

Brownback has been leading a congressional charge against Hollywood, attempting to embarrass the industry with its rawest creations. On Wednesday, he will be grilling film executives scheduled to make a rare appearance at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on marketing entertainment violence to children.

At age 44, Brownback is one of the youngest members of the Senate, a pugnacious, conservative lawmaker who uses public display and occasional humiliation as an extension of political warfare.

He represents unsynthesized anger in a conflicted nation that does not always like what is coming out of Hollywood but keeps lining up to see it. His style has become something of a trademark at increasingly frequent congressional hearings: confronting Hollywood with the foul language and grisly images it creates, yanked from the sanctity of a dark theater and aired in the stark light of a hearing room.

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Even people in the industry find it hard to question his commitment, although he sometimes sees evil where they see creativity. “I do believe people like Sen. Brownback are extremely sincere,” Jack Valenti, the industry’s chief Washington lobbyist, has said.

Brownback came to Washington as a member of the House, part of Newt Gingrich’s rebellious class of ‘94, spending one term there before leaping at the chance to succeed Sen. Bob Dole when he resigned to run for president in 1996. Brownback is the polar opposite of predecessor Dole, a deliberative veteran who accomplished more behind the scenes than in front of the cameras.

In many ways, Brownback fits precisely the profile of the young Christian conservative: against abortion, against new taxes, for the 2nd Amendment, for smaller government. He attends midweek Washington Bible readings and prayer sessions, and keeps pictures of Mother Teresa and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his office wall as models of activism and faith.

Although he is now worth millions thanks to the wealth of his wife’s family, Brownback grew up on a modest farm in Parker, Kan. He lives in Topeka with his children--ages 2 to 14--in a home his aides describe as middle-class. He drives a Saturn.

Still, he is hard to pigeonhole, often straying from the conservative pack in ways that puzzle some in his home state. He was one of Gingrich’s most-quoted revolutionaries but refused to sign the “contract with America,” the House GOP campaign manifesto, opting to join a rump group of New Federalists that defied the leadership.

He has embraced campaign finance reform, which did not endear him to his conservative constituents. While virtually all of his fellow Commerce Committee members have received contributions from the film industry, Brownback has taken none.

He opposed a ban on assault weapons but favored restrictions on the purchase of handguns. And he joined forces with the liberal likes of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in fighting corporate welfare.

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Even as a leader in the crusade to curb entertainment violence, Brownback threw out a surprise earlier this month--casting one of only two committee votes against limiting violent programs to hours when children are least likely to be watching.

“I think that starts us down a path of content regulation and I disagree with that,” he said in an interview. “What I constantly push is the industry setting its own code of conduct.”

Cleaning up the pollution of popular culture has become his signature issue, a cause fueled by his experience as a father of young children, two of them 2-year-olds adopted last year from Guatemala and China.

“I’ve seen an overall view of the cultural environment my children swim in,” Brownback said. “Parents used to feel buttressed by the popular culture--George Washington saying, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’ Now culture attacks the family.”

Asked to name his all-time favorite movie and television show, he reached all the way back to “Star Wars” and “MASH.” In his home, he limits television watching and restricts movies but has known the frustration of forbidding a child from seeing a film only to learn that he watched it at a friend’s house.

“That’s what’s so frustrating about Hollywood,” Brownback said. “It is a fabulous business that creates terrific things. And then [it] produces products that target kids and push the edge so parents are always in a position of saying no and Hollywood is always in the position of saying it’s the parents’ responsibility.”

So he fires off news releases urging television networks to reinstate the family hour or adopt a code of conduct--neither of which the industry seems ready or willing to do.

“There are some show-horse elements to that,” said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political science professor. “But from a long-term political perspective, [Brownback] is getting a lot of attention. The conservative wing of the party is going to be around as a major player for a long time. Maybe he’s not getting a lot of legislative results, but he’s standing for something.”