Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.issues From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: issues Tue, Jun 23 1992 Date: Tue, 23 Jun 92 05:14:12 EDT Message-ID: 06-23 0000 DECISIONLINE: Issues & Debate USA TODAY Update June 23, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network Here are some of the issues and topics being debated across the nation Tuesday morning in USA TODAY: Speech; Ratings; Outlook. TODAY'S DEBATE - CROSS BURNING: USA TODAY'S OPINION: Racist and sexist acts are hard to tolerate, but the Supreme Court did the right thing Monday striking down laws aimed at banning them. Those laws, increasingly common across the nation, add little or no punishment for the guilty while putting the innocent at risk. The court struck down a St. Paul, Minn., ordinance that outlawed cross burning or display of symbols like Nazi swastikas that may arouse "anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." ... The acts these laws aim to stop ... are despicable, but the laws themselves are crude and dangerous tools. Many, like St. Paul's, risk silencing any speech that tramples on any person's sensitivity. Who defines which speech is offensive? Or what motivated the person who used it? ... If the goal is to put a stop to an alarming rise in the incidence of hate crimes, such laws are redundant. Other statutes against trespass, vandalism, harassment and threats can do the job without risking anyone's right to say what they think. ... (Free speech), so fundamental to our society, is too precious to place at risk. OTHER VIEW: JULIANNE MALVEAUX, a San Francisco writer, economist, lecturer and columnist for King Features Syndicate: I'm not at all surprised that this Supreme Court has just effectively put its imprimatur on hate crimes, striking down a St. Paul, Minn., law that prohibits actions like cross burnings on the grounds that it violates the right to freedom of speech. ... The court had the challenge of weighing African-American safety against so-called free speech, and, as is consistent with prior rulings, it chose free speech over black safety. The justices' ruling places dozens of local hate-crime laws in jeopardy and ignores the fact that these laws were passed because hate crime has been on the rise this past decade. ... To assert that cross-burning is a free-speech right is to celebrate that ugly history and to assert that white people have the right to try to keep black people in "their place." The Supreme Court committed an outrage when it overturned the St. Paul law. ... The justices ... have proven themselves no better than the court that found against Dred Scott in 1857, the court that wrote the infamous words, "Blacks have no rights that whites are bound to respect." VOICES ACROSS THE NATION ON WHETHER MOVIE RATINGS OFTEN MISLEAD: LOS ANGELES, Calif., Jennifer Ashley, 36, actress, talk show host: No. The ratings are pretty accurate. PG-rated movies, you know you can take kids to. What gets me is violent movies. I starred in a lot of violent movies and they really got me. I was hung in a cave for eight hours; it was horrible. I don't think kids need to see that junk. SYRACUSE, N.Y., David Mitchell, 40, assistant football coach: Some ratings are misleading as far as the language and violence. My 9-year-old son loves Batman and is dying to see the new one. I read the ratings and my wife and I decide. She has taken him to PG-13-rated movies and found some more violent than expected. ST. LOUIS, Mo., Frank Gundlach, 54, lawyer: The ratings are much too lenient in the area of language. You're guided by the rating and find the language offensive and embarrassing. Movies stress the turmoil of life. The classic movies, like "Dr. Zhivago" and "Around the World in 80 Days," are few and far between. CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Mary Beberman, 33, flight attendant: Yes, I agree that movie reviews are misleading. The commercial pressures are too great for the rating systems to be fair or honest. If parents are concerned with what their children see, they should see the movie first. LOGANSPORT, Ind., David R. Calisto, 28, insurance agent: They aren't always misleading. The industry is, of course, powered by money. Whatever age bracket the movie targets, they gear ratings to that market. I haven't seen "Batman Returns," but "Batman" was correctly rated. They are targeting the youth market. TOPIC - NATIONAL MOOD: Everett Ladd, a professor of political science and president of the Roper Center for Public Opinion and Research, was interviewed by USA TODAY's Sharon Shahid. IS A POLL SHOWING 14% SATISFIED WITH THE WAY THINGS ARE ALARMING? You've had wild oscillations over the past 20 years, massive shifts as the normal order of the day. There are a lot of different measures of national mood out there, not just this question. I've just charted all of them for the last 20 years. WHAT DID YOU FIND? There are four periods when many of the measures have been down over the last 20 years: Watergate; the Carter "malaise" era in '79; the '82 recession, and now. And there have been points when things have been notably up: Carter coming in as a fresh face in '77; the "Morning in America" time in 1985, economic growth and when Reagan was elected to a second term, and then the conclusion of the gulf war. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THESE WILD MOOD SWINGS? You've got two different dimensions of the national mood. "How am I doing?" and "How is the country doing?" The measures of mood involving personal situations are consistently optimistic and stable. The measures of national direction are consistently unstable. I mean, how does anyone know how the country is doing? You don't experience the whole country. And then you've got a third dimension of mood. Issues & Debate Editor: Beth Mann. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM