Maturity Leveler

In Thursday’s edition, the one with the front-page articles about movie executives apologizing to Congress about marketing R-rated movies to children, The Times itself was pushing R-rated fare to kids.

A total of 12 R-rated movies were recommended for viewers under the age of 17 in Calendar Weekend’s Family Filmgoer column. Don’t you know that only the MPAA’s handful of morally superior film screeners can decide at what age our children may view a film? How dare you recommend movies like “Urban Legends: Final Cut” and “The Watcher” to innocent children as young as 16 years, 364 days of age. Deciding the various maturity levels of the millions of different children in this country should be the job of a nonelected, anonymous committee or a Washington bureaucrat, not the “Hollywood Elite” of The Times.

I will cry myself to sleep tonight when I think of the irreversible damage you have done to our unprotected little ones. Let’s hope that someone in Washington is taking notice of your heinous practice and will hold hearings and pass laws to stop you from doing more damage to our children in the future.

Harrumph.

DREW CAREY

Los Angeles