[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 85 (Monday, June 24, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3849-H3852]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN OUR CULTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kerns). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I am new to this environment, and it is 
truly amazing to me sometimes what we hear on this floor. I had not 
planned to talk on this issue tonight, but I thought I would say a 
couple words.
  I have heard that the Republicans are out to destroy Medicare, been 
bought off by the drug companies, went to expensive banquets. I am a 
member of the majority. I have not heard from anyone in the drug 
companies. I have not taken a dime from anybody in drug companies, and 
I really wonder how many people on both sides of the aisle can say 
exactly the same thing.
  This is something I would be very interested in hearing. I am really 
interested in basic fairness. That is something that I think in my 
former life usually we felt we saw.
  There is a significant difference between the two plans. The main 
difference, which I did not hear discussed here this evening, is that 
one plan costs between $800 billion and $1 trillion, and no one knows 
exactly how much. The other plan spends $350 billion. So the Democrat 
plan is three times, roughly, as expensive.
  Now, if we spend three times as much money, we can probably just 
about provide anything that anybody wanted. But at some point, we have 
to pay for it; and $350 billion was budgeted more than a year ago for 
Medicare and prescription drugs. The Republican bill fits within that 
$350 billion frame. Therefore, it seems that, in fairness, that should 
be mentioned here after the debate that I heard tonight; not the 
debate, but the discussion.
  But that is not why I am here this evening, Mr. Speaker. I came here 
to discuss something quite different. I used to be in the coaching 
profession for 36 years, and I worked extensively with young people 
during that period of time. I guess over that 36-year period I saw some 
significant changes in our culture. These changes disturbed me greatly.
  I saw progressively more and more young men who were coming from 
dysfunctional situations, from broken homes, and particularly young men 
who had no father. I saw more drug abuse. Actually, when I started 
coaching in the early 1960s, drug abuse was relatively unknown. Of 
course, today we have a major problem. I saw progressively more 
violence, more violent behavior. I saw more promiscuous behavior.
  I would have to say that, in searching about for a reason, trying to 
determine where that came from, I would have to say that I think it was 
fueled to some degree by an ever-increasing amount of obscenity, 
violence, drug abuse, and promiscuity presented in our media. I do not 
mean to totally bash the media. I am sure there are other factors. But 
there is no question that there has been a significant increase in 
media violence, pornography, obscenity, and all these types of issues.
  So it was very easy for me, when someone came to me several months 
ago and asked, would you sign on and cosponsor a bill called the Media 
Marketing Accountability Act, and since I was interested in this issue 
and I was interested in young people, I said, sure, I would be glad to. 
The reason this was a bill that I thought made sense was that the 
purpose of the bill was to stop the deceptive marketing of adult-rated, 
sexually explicit, graphically violent products to children.
  The entertainment industry has their own rating system, and the 
movies are rated R, PG-13, or whatever; the video game system has their 
own rating system; and the music industry has their own rating system. 
What we are finding, according to the Federal Trade Commission, was 
that people were not beaming their advertising in accordance with their 
rating, so we would have an R-rated movie, an adult video game; we 
would have an adult recording that was advertised in magazines that 
preteen and early teen children read; or TV programs that were watched 
by young children.
  So we thought there would be no problem. Certainly these people would 
agree. Yet, the day after this bill was introduced, I got a visit from 
one of the chief lobbyists with the entertainment industry. He began to 
tell me what a bad bill this was and how I should not be on the bill 
and on and on and on. I began to realize that they were serious, that 
they were going to market their products to children that were much 
younger than what the product would indicate by their own rating 
system.
  So that was what piqued my interest in the subject. I think it is 
important that we think about this a little bit tonight.
  I not long ago visited with one of the Congressmen who has been here 
a while who has been interested in this topic. He seemed a little 
discouraged. He seemed a little beat down. He said that he was not sure 
we were going to make any progress. That was concerning to me. I think 
the reason that he felt this way is that there had been a number of 
court decisions over recent years that have certainly led to the 
conclusion that it is going to be difficult to get anything done.

  Let me just explain a few of these.
  In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that indecent speech is protected by 
the first amendment and overturned the Communications Decency Act. That 
was in 1997.
  In 1998, the Supreme Court refused to rule decisively on the Child 
On-line Protection Act, thereby allowing the legislation to remain law 
while preventing it from taking effect. Effectively, it killed the bill 
in 1998.
  In 2002, the Supreme Court overturned the Child Pornography 
Prevention Act, ruling that child pornography must either involve 
minors engaged in sexual activity or meet the legal definition of 
obscenity to lose first amendment protection.
  What this was about was there was a provision in there that would not 
allow adults who were dressed as or masquerading as children to 
participate in this type of pornography or to use some type of computer 
graphics that would simulate child pornography, which can be very 
realistic, and can be very difficult sometimes to tell between the real 
thing and the simulation. Again, the Supreme Court overturned this.
  In 2002, a three-judge Federal court declared the Children's Internet 
Protection Act requirements that all schools and libraries receiving 
Federal funds use Internet filtering material to protect minors from 
harmful materials on the Internet; and, of course, what this means is 
you need a computer chip, you need some way to protect children from 
accidentally, in libraries and public spaces, from contacting 
pornography. Again, that was overturned.
  So there have been a series of cases where the courts have simply 
overturned acts that seem to make sense and that are aimed at 
protecting our children.
  Of course, one of the bills that really interested me was a few years 
ago the court ruled that a minute of silence at the beginning of a 
school day was unconstitutional. One minute of silence at the beginning 
of a school day was unconstitutional. So that minute was intended to 
focus kids to spend a little bit of time if they wanted to in prayer, 
or they could look out the window if they wanted to, or think about 
their history exam that was coming up, just one minute of silence. Yet 
it was deemed by the court that somehow this violated somebody's 
religious freedom.
  So we have seen our culture shaped consistently by court decisions 
over the last 15, 20, 25 years; and sometimes the shift is so 
imperceptible we are not aware of it, but over time it has moved us 
from here to here in a very clear fashion.
  The effects of pornography are sometimes difficult to even talk 
about, but I thought I would mention some of them tonight.
  First of all, let us mention that pornography is not a victimless 
industry. Oftentimes, those who are interested in first amendment 
rights will indicate that what one sees and hears and reads really has 
no bearing on how one behaves. I guess to some people that makes sense.

[[Page H3850]]

  But if we think about the advertising industry, which annually spends 
billions of dollars, it would not seem to me that the advertising 
industry would go along with that. Because, obviously, what we hear and 
what we see and what we read and what we listen to does have some 
impact on our behavior or we would not spend all that money in the 
advertising industry.
  There are hundreds of thousands of dollars that are spent each year 
during the Super Bowl for a 30-second spot, prime time, hundreds of 
thousands of dollars maybe for a minute, 1\1/2\ minutes. If we think 
about it, an advertising company, if they can get their soft drink 
product out there, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, whatever, and they can get 
somebody to look at that product in a commercial or on a billboard, in 
a magazine, in a newspaper, and they can just see it five or six times 
a week, they realize that that is going to substantially increase the 
sales of that particular product.

                              {time}  2045

  And on the other hand if you think about it, if you see material that 
glorifies drug use, whether it be in a recording or on a television 
program or whatever and that is presented maybe 10, 15, 20 times a 
week, it certainly is going to move your behavior in that direction.
  Last night I happened to be tuned into a television show very briefly 
and someone was interviewing a rock star, and the rock star apparently 
had received an award sometime previously, and the interviewer asked 
the rock star what he was doing when he heard about the award that he 
had gotten. And he said, well, he really could not remember because he 
was stoned at the time. And the interesting thing was the reaction of 
the audience. They seemed to enjoy that. They clapped and they 
applauded. And so there is no question that the entertainment industry 
is impacting our values and impacting the way that we would view drug 
abuse.
  Another issue, if a young person views promiscuous behavior, 20, 25, 
30 times a week, whether it be in movies, television, whether they hear 
it on a recording, again, that is certainly going to impact behavior 
and it certainly has. If we see very violent acts 50, 60 times a week, 
and it may be more than that for many young people, again, we are going 
to shift our behavior towards violence.
  Pornography exploits and victimizes women and children, and it does 
so for money. Pornography is a $15 billion-a-year industry. Just a few 
years ago, it was a matter of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today 
it is a $15 billion industry. In one study, nearly 80 percent of 
convicted molesters admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography. 
Roughly 80 percent. When you talk about people being sexually 
aggressive, attacking young women, the figure went up to 90 percent 
being regular users of hard-core pornography. So again we would have to 
say that there does appear to be a link between what people hear and 
what they see and what they read and what they do. And so we are really 
flooding our society today with material that I believe is really 
dramatically affecting the lives of our children.
  Currently, there are over one million pornographic Web sites on the 
Internet. Let me say that again. I did not say a hundred. I did not say 
a thousand. I did not say a hundred thousand. I said one million porn 
sites on the Internet.
  I remember back in the eighties we had a Senator from Nebraska, Jim 
Exon was his name, and he tried to pass some legislation to regulate 
pornography on the Internet, and at that time people laughed at him and 
they said it will never happen, and it got nowhere. Today there are one 
million porn sites on the Internet. So if you put in a search word, 
girls dot-com, which some young person might do, you are going to get a 
host of porn sites.
  I guess on a personal note, a few months ago I found that anyone who 
entered my name in a search engine would pull up a porn site. And so 
some young person out in the third district of Nebraska who was told to 
write a report on his Congressman very innocently would type in my name 
and there would be a porn site or someone who is trying to do a 
research project on old broken-down football coaches would put in my 
name and see the same thing. So it is virtually impossible today for a 
young person to be on the Internet very long, very often, very 
regularly and not run into this. And some of it is so graphic that it 
can actually sear a young mind in a way that that young mind never 
quite gets rid of that image. So the effects are really disastrous.
  I would like to give you some examples of what this industry is doing 
to our culture. It was reported in a national review that a rural 
Canadian town began receiving television signals for the first time in 
1973. Apparently, this Canadian town was somewhat far removed from 
metropolitan areas so they really did not get a television signal until 
1973. They found over the next 2 years, by 1975, that violent and 
criminal behavior in that community had gone up 160 percent. Maybe that 
was just accidental, but I would have to believe that there may have 
been some cause-and-effect relationship.
  In 1999 a survey found that two-thirds of American teens believed 
that violence in America's television and music ``is partially 
responsible for crimes like the Littleton shootings at the Columbine 
High School,'' and this was put out by the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
So we find two out of three people living in the community in the 
environment where they are inundated by some of these messages say that 
they believe that there would be a link between that violence and that 
culture and what happened at Littleton. And I guess they were pretty 
much on track because 5 days after the massacre, NBC reported that the 
Littleton killers idolized shock rocker Marilyn Manson. And Marilyn 
Manson was described by the music press as an ``ultra-violent satanic 
rock monstrosity.''
  Kip Kinkel, who murdered his parents and two students in Springfield, 
Oregon, also was a great fan of Marilyn Manson, and that was reported 
in the Oregonian.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics has said in 1999 in a formal 
report: ``Children do not naturally kill. It is a learned skill, and 
they learn it most pervasively from violence as entertainment in 
television, movies and interactive video games.''
  A new national poll is out and it says this, that 76 percent of young 
people between 12 and 17 years of age say that pop culture encourages 
drug use. Of course, we have talked about that a little earlier, but 
particularly I think you will find in the recording industry that there 
is a great glamorization of the drug culture. So 75 percent of young 
people have drawn that conclusion as well.
  The National Education Association estimates that many of the 5,000 
teenage suicides each year are linked to depression that have been 
fueled by fatalistic music and lyrics. As you know, we lead the 
civilized world in teenage suicides. I believe the National Education 
Association is probably correct here, that some of the music that young 
people are absorbing is so fatalistic and glorify suicide to some 
degree to the point that some of these suicides obviously have to be 
linked.
  The headline in the Wall Street Journal in May of 2000 says this: 
``AT&T To Offer Hard Core Adult Movies In Drive For Digital 
Subscribers.'' That was a headline in the Wall Street Journal. And 
AT&T, as most everyone listening would know, is one of the premiere 
industries in the United States. It is a so-called blue chip stock, and 
yet here we find a company with the stature of AT&T marketing hard-core 
pornography.
  So what we have seen is that the bottom line has become more 
important than integrity. The bottom line is more important to industry 
than the welfare of our children. And this was, I guess, one of the 
most discouraging things I saw. Senator Joseph Lieberman said this, he 
was referring to the traditionally family-friendly fare between eight 
and nine o'clock, the children's hour. He said, there is ``material we 
never even imagined being on commercial television are now the nightly 
norm.'' He said, ``Sex is being marketed to children not only as 
desirable but good, regular and normal.''
  Then there was an editorial by the New York Post. It said: 
``Increasingly, parents recognize the need to protect their children 
from popular culture. Indeed, it is scandalous that law-abiding, 
church-going citizens have come to see

[[Page H3851]]

themselves as strangers in their own land. Their values and aspirations 
are under constant assault from the violent and sexualized images the 
entertainment industry pumps in their lives.''
  I think most of us can relate to that. Many of us sit in our living 
rooms and wonder, What can we do to protect our children? What can we 
do to protect our grandchildren? Where are we headed as a Nation?
  A 15-year-old raped an 8-year-old girl, and he said he got the idea 
from watching the Jerry Springer Show. Many of you may have heard of 
the movie ``Natural Born Killers.'' I did not happen to see it, but I 
heard about it. I understand that there are multiple cases where young 
people have seen that movie and gone out and done copy-cat killings, 
and they ascribe ``Natural Born Killers'' as their primary motivation.
  I knew a young man several years ago who was a good person, very 
gentle, very mild mannered; and for some reason he got addicted 
practically to a particularly violent recording. And he listened to it 
over and over and over again over roughly a 48-hour period. And some of 
his friends told him you have to quit this. It is not good. It is a 
very unhealthy practice, and not long after he went out and attacked a 
young woman and beat her severely, someone he did not know who was just 
walking down the sidewalk. Of course, there were probably some other 
factors going on here, but I certainly believe that that particular 
recording was part of the picture.
  Obscenity has been given a free pass under the auspices of the first 
amendment. In assuring the rights to free speech, we may have destroyed 
other freedoms. And certainly I am in favor of free speech. I think 
everyone out there would say free speech is something we have to have, 
and I agree with that. But in the process of protecting free speech, I 
guess my question is, have we taken away some other freedoms from other 
people, particularly young people? And so if you are the victim of 
someone who has assaulted you, primarily inspired by some type of 
pornography, your freedoms have been taken away. There are hundreds, I 
think, in our country every year that are killed annually by those 
influenced by violence in the media. Tens of thousands are assaulted 
and raped by those addicted to pornography. What about their rights?
  Pornography and pedophilia result in sexual assaults on our children; 
rape, assaults, and degradation of our women; and the break up of 
marriages. One half of our marriages currently end in divorce. There is 
no question that in some cases pornography is a major factor in 
the break up of a marriage.

  This is something I have found very discouraging. The Center for 
Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 3 million teens per year 
contract sexually transmitted diseases and many of those diseases are 
incurable. The important thing to remember is that we are talking about 
3 million each year. And since many are incurable, we are developing a 
fairly large number of young people who are infected with diseases that 
they will never be able to overcome. Out-of-wedlock birth rate was 5 
percent in 1960. Today it is 33 percent. So one out of every three 
children born in our culture today is born with two strikes against 
them. I have to believe that to some degree the degradation of our 
media has had a direct influence on that.
  I might also mention that obscenity is not protected by the first 
amendment. This is something that runs contrary to the belief of most 
people as the only type of speech to which the Supreme Court has denied 
first amendment protection. When the founders drafted the Constitution, 
obscenity was ``outside the protection intended for speech and the 
press.'' The recognition of this understanding contrasts sharply with 
recent decisions regarding pornography, obscenity, and indecency. It 
appears that the Court has drifted from that earlier concept and 
drifted rather severely.
  To determine obscenity, the Court determined a three-part test, which 
is called the Miller Test which I will put up here and let you take a 
look at.
  The Miller test says this: that something is obscene if ``the average 
person applying contemporary community standards would find that the 
word taken as a whole appeals to prurient interests.'' Which means 
simply arousal and it has no redeeming factor. Secondly, whether the 
work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct 
specifically defined by applicable state law. And, third, whether the 
work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or 
scientific value.
  I would imagine most people would say that a great deal of what they 
are seeing, what is coming into the living room at the present time 
would certainly be declared obscene under the Miller Test.
  So you say, well, why do not we have more prosecutions? Why is this 
continuing to go on? And the reason is essentially that we do not have 
very many people that are willing to take it to court, and we do not 
have very many courts that are willing to hear the case. And so we have 
sort of had an abrogation of responsibility in this case, and we 
certainly have the tools to attack the problem.
  Child pornography is defined in material that visually depicts sexual 
conduct by children, is not protected by the first amendment, and is 
also not subject to the Miller Test. So child pornography, period, even 
the possessing of it is illegal. So as a people, I think we have not 
expressed outrage, we have not spoken out, we have not taken obscene 
material to court. We certainly have become desensitized, and we 
continue to support companies who support obscene material through 
advertising, such as AT&T.

                              {time}  2100

  Last, on this particular point, what I would like to mention is that 
the Department of Justice has not prosecuted an obscenity case in the 
United States in the last 1\1/2\ years. In 1\1/2\ years, no obscenity 
cases have been prosecuted by the Department of Justice, and I know 
that this was one of the President's priorities when he ran for office. 
I know this is important to the President; and so it seems to me that 
our courts and we as the public, we as the Congress certainly need to 
be more responsible, more active.
  I would like to reflect in the remaining 5 minutes or 6 minutes that 
I have here this evening exactly where we are historically; and this 
may seem like sort of a stretch, but I think it is important that from 
time to time we stand back as a Nation and try to look at where we are 
and where we are headed. Sometimes one of the best ways to do that is 
to see where other nations have been in the past.
  Certainly, today, the United States is the most powerful Nation in 
the world. Fifteen years ago, we could have said, well, the Soviet 
Union was certainly close. Maybe 100 years ago we would have said the 
British empire, but I would say that, more recently, that we are pretty 
much in a position of pre-eminence where we stand alone. We are the 
most powerful Nation in the world politically, economically, in terms 
of ability to act socially throughout the world; and so it may be that 
we would have to go back a ways in history before we found another 
culture, another civilization that was similar.
  I guess where I would head would be to Rome, and that is a long ways 
back. That is 2,000 years ago, but the Roman empire was a similar 
phenomenon to what we see today. The Roman empire totally dominated the 
then civilized world in almost every facet of its being. So if my 
colleagues think about the Roman empire and if they ever studied 
Gibbons' Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, they would realize there 
were a number of factors that led to the demise of the Roman empire.
  One of the major reasons for the fall of Rome was a decaying of 
values and the decaying of unity within the nation. Roman citizens 
became self-absorbed. If my colleagues have thought about the Roman 
coliseum, I happened to be in Rome a couple of years ago and saw the 
coliseum, and I thought about the fact that there were literally 
thousands of people who met their death in that arena. So to entertain 
the Roman mob, through name popular, the Romans had increasingly 
violent displays of gladiatorial combat, chariot races, simulated boat 
races where people inevitably died.
  So the violence escalated, corruption escalated; and, as a result, 
eventually Rome began to disassemble. It began to

[[Page H3852]]

collapse from within. So I think that we need to think about this and 
realize that there may be some lessons that we can learn here.
  I think we can continue to be the predominant Nation in the world but 
only if our moral and spiritual underpinnings remain strong. I think if 
we look at our current crisis in the business community, we can see 
very clearly what a crisis of confidence in just three or four 
companies does to the overall economy; and, right now, it is not 9/11. 
It is what happened at Enron and Andersen and Global Crossing and 
companies like this, which is really holding our economy back more than 
anything.
  The framers of the Constitution did not envision freedom of speech 
embracing obscene material. That simply was beyond their thinking. The 
framers of the Constitution did not envision that even a minute of 
silence at the beginning of a school day would be unconstitutional, 
would violate somebody's religious freedom.
  The framers of the Constitution did not envision the rise of post-
modernism. Post-modernism is basically the idea that there are no moral 
absolutes, that everything is relative. This has become a very 
pervasive thought pattern in our world today, in our country today.
  So the idea would be that adultery is not absolutely wrong. It may 
depend on what part of the country someone is in, who is involved, but 
it really is relative to the circumstance.
  Today, we would not say that stealing is absolutely wrong, according 
to post-modernism, because it depends on how much someone needs, what 
they are stealing, who they take it from, and certainly if someone 
steals from the government, it does not count.
  Lying is not absolutely wrong, according to post-modernism. Everyone 
does it. Sometimes we need to protect our career, our reputation. It 
may even be possible to lie under oath and get by with it.
  Then, of course, fourth, it is not absolutely wrong to take an 
innocent life, according to post-modernism, because maybe that life is 
not old enough to be viable; maybe that life is too old to be useful; 
maybe that life is terminally ill; maybe that life simply does not want 
to live anymore. So it is all relative.
  This is a very prevalent philosophy, and I think it would be very 
foreign, be something unheard of to the founders and the framers of the 
Constitution. As great of a threat as terrorism is, I believe in the 
present time that the greatest threat to our Nation is a collapse of 
values.
  That may sound like an extreme statement to say at this particular 
junction. I do not want anyone to believe that I am at all minimizing 
the importance of the war on terrorism. I believe that every dime that 
we have appropriated here to fight the war on terrorism, everything the 
President has done to try to keep things on track has been very, very 
appropriate, but I would also say that what is happening internally, 
what is happening to our children, what is happening to our value 
system, long-term, long haul, may prove to be every bit as threatening, 
if not more, than the war on terrorism.
  Someone once said America is great because America is good. I believe 
that is true, and I believe America is still good. There is no country 
in the world that is as generous, as philanthropic, is based on 
spiritual values as the United States.
  I would also say that there are some storm clouds on the horizon. 
There are some things out there that concern me, and so those who do 
not like the shape of those clouds should do all that they can to elect 
people who will appoint people to the courts who reflect their values.
  Currently, in the other body, we have failed to fill 100 vacant 
judgeships for various reasons. It has almost brought our judicial 
system to a halt. The question is, who in the next 2 or 3 years is 
going to be making those decisions over in the other body as to who 
will fill those judgeships? Within the next 2 to 3 years we will 
probably have two to three members of the Supreme Court who will resign 
or retire; and when that happens, who is going to shape those 
nominations and those decisions?
  If people like the way we are headed right now, then they certainly 
are committed to one course of action. If, on the other hand, people 
think we are treading on dangerous ground, then I think we better think 
very carefully as to who we send to the other body, who represents the 
people in this area here. I think it is incumbent upon the American 
people to elect people who aggressively promote a moral society and 
will protect our young people from obscenity.
  This has not been an easy thing to talk about. It has not been an 
easy thing to think about, but I do believe that we cannot put our head 
in the sand. I believe this is a real problem. I think it is something 
we are all involved in, we can certainly address. So I would encourage, 
Mr. Speaker, those who are listening tonight to become active, to 
become politically active, become involved. Because the only thing that 
is going to let this thing continue to succeed and continue to fester 
is if we stand by as a Nation and continue to let it happen.

                          ____________________