Within the past month we've had an FBI report on the "school shooter" threat profile, which again strains to make a link between popular culture and teenage mass murderers. We've had a report from the Federal Trade Commission lacerating the entertainment industry for marketing violence to minors. The Senate Commerce, Science & Technology Committee, on which Joe Lieberman sits, held hearings on these issues in September.

For their part, Al Gore and Lieberman have told the entertainment industry that it has six months to clean up its act, or, once installed in the White House, the next Democratic administration will draft laws to compel Hollywood, the computer and video companies, and the music industry to mend their ways.

Grandstanding about the entertainment industry has been a specialty of Al and Tipper Gore since Al first entered Congress in 1977 (the year the couple were formally Born Again). Tipper was part of a Congressional wives' club agitating against violence and sex on TV, and then in the mid-eighties came Tipper's famous campaign, abetted by her husband, against explicit rock 'n' rap music.

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