July 10 - 17, 1997
![[Censorship]](/alt1/archive/news/97/07/10/image/Censored_468x80.gif)
Good news: the citizens of Texas are no longer "subsidizing the destruction of their own children." Censored sensibilities
The legions of decency are at work again, backing laws that would forbid state governments from investing in record companies that release 'obscene' lyrics
by Michael Crowley
Those words come from the director of a right-wing group called the American Family Association of Texas, which believes that the youth of America are being ruined by the raps of Snoop Doggy Dogg and the posturing of Marilyn Manson.
Last month, Texas governor George W. Bush embedded this belief in the state's law.
Free-speech and music-industry groups howled in protest, and Willie Nelson himself traveled to the state house in Austin to testify against the new measure, which forbids the investment of any state money in companies linked to obscene or violent lyrics. Despite the righteous fuss, beginning in September of next year, Texas state agencies will be barred from investing in businesses with holdings of 10 percent or more in a company that records or produces music "that explicitly describes, glamorizes or advocates" anything on a long list of topics, including criminal violence, murder, assault on a police officer, sexual assault, gang activity, misogyny, and drug use.
Jello Biafra cuts to the politics of pop
This law is a new tactic in the cultural war being waged by social conservatives, who feel that the country's moral fabric is unraveling under the influence of pop-cultural phenomena from gangsta rap to Ellen. Texas's decision sets a troubling precedent, especially with several other states considering new limitations on so-called "obscene" music. Yes, American culture can be ugly. But in a country whose Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law censoring the Internet, you might expect even conservatives to understand the peril of politicians imposing their tastes on speech and art. Especially those conservatives who think it's not government's job to solve social problems.
On its own, this law won't rearrange the music business: even a few million dollars in Texas pension-fund investments makes almost zero difference to the giant conglomerates of the entertainment and media industries. But if other states follow suit, the money could get serious fast, and record labels -- opponents fear -- would begin turning their backs on controversial artists.
Cooked up by Republican state senator Bill Ratliff, the Texas law was designed to target gangsta rap -- whose lyrics, Ratliff says, "poison the minds of children." Specifically, Ratliff sought to rid the state of its at least $15.5 million of holdings in the Seagram company. Seagram owns Universal Music Group, which holds a 50 percent share in the Interscope music label, which distributes Death Row records, on which the late Tupac Shakur rapped about blasting cops.
But in trying to separate the "bad" lyrics from the "good," the Texas law shows just how futile an exercise that is. Here we have a perfect example of what goes wrong when government tries to influence art (a trend that is also bringing us a congressional effort to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts). Short of the Monkees, it's hard to imagine what acts wouldn't be affected by this law. The prohibition on discussing illegal drugs wipes out about 70 percent of pop music right off the bat. Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" is no good under the assaulting-a-police-officer provision. Gang activity snuffs out West Side Story. And as for Willie Nelson -- he visited the state house partly out of self-preservation.
"It doesn't take a lawyer to figure out that this bill attacks a tremendous variety of music," Nelson wrote in a letter to the chair of the state's pension-investment committee, "including songs I have written and recorded. . . . Like a great many artists, I speak quite frankly with my audience. Often times it is the only way to talk about certain subjects and situations that some may find unpleasant but are a very real part of America." (Nelson, who also testified against the bill in person, notes that his classic album Red Headed Stranger flunks the state's new taste test.)
In recent years, investment politics have advanced some bedrock liberal causes. The clearest and grandest example, of course, is the role divestment played in shattering South Africa's apartheid. And growing calls for divestment from tobacco companies helped box the cigarette makers into the corner they're in now.
So it's ironic to see the strategy taken up by cultural warriors like William Bennett and C. Dolores Tucker (the woman behind Time Warner's 1995 dumping of Death Row Records), who believe pop music is fraying the nation's moral fiber. To many in the anti-obscenity crowd, kids are turning out rotten because of what rappers and shock-rockers are telling them over their headphones. These concerns aren't completely preposterous. Who can celebrate a society where teenagers memorize rhymes about killing police officers? But it's impossible to ignore the fact that in the case of rap, for instance, lyrics about guns and drugs followed the appearance of those realities in the inner city. First the drive-bys, then Ice Cube. Concentrating on the lyrics is a diversion from the problems that produce them in the first place -- problems like dissolving communities and economic malaise. It's issues like these that government should be dealing with, not Insane Clown Posse.
On a more practical level, the law is simply unwieldy. In an age of corporate carnivores, tracing the chain of ownership to determine which company owns what stake in a Bob Dylan record that mentions dope-smoking is a giant headache for fund-managing bureaucrats. Not to mention that the more investment strategies are restricted, the lower the return will be for those pensioners whose money is being manipulated. It's for that reason, among others, that the law's constitutionality is soon to be challenged in a Texas court.
The measure's passage, however, shows that the family-values crowd is learning to employ more sophisticated tactics than shooing Marilyn Manson out of the local arena. Denouncing shock-rock and rap at a press conference can put record companies on the defensive. But it's the purse strings that make all the difference. For those opposed to the agenda of the conservative right, this new shrewdness is a worrisome sign.
The Texas example will surely lend momentum to the culture crusades of Tucker, Bennett and company. Previous efforts to pass similar divestment laws in Pennsylvania and Maryland are expected to be renewed, and other movements are afoot as well: the Pennsylvania legislature, for instance, is considering a bill to criminalize the sale of recordings with the "Parental Advisory" logo. The Louisiana legislature has passed such a law three times this decade, although each was vetoed by the governor. And last year the Washington state legislature passed a bill that, among other things, would have banned kids under 18 from buying recordings or attending concerts by artists whose albums bore advisory stickers. (The bill was vetoed by the state's Democratic governor.)
No such efforts are under way in Massachusetts at the moment, according to Nina Crowley of the local anti-censorship group Mass. M.I.C. But state treasurer Joe Malone, who oversees pension investments, knows the divestment game; he's sought to end Massachusetts's investments in tobacco companies. And it doesn't take much for a political fad -- however wrongheaded -- to catch fire. Imagine the likely fallout, for example, if some local teenager accused of a violent crime turned out to be a rabid Marilyn Manson fan: a screaming headline in the Boston Herald and swift, righteous action on Beacon Hill. (For the record, the state's pension fund has about $19 million of holdings in Seagram, some $60.1 million in Time Warner, and $54 million in Disney.)
Conservatives aren't wrong to worry about morality in America, or to ask whether there are ways to make a little less caustic the mass culture that shapes young people. But conservatives so often argue -- wrongly -- that there is no place for government in curing social ills from poverty to pollution. They'd be right, for once, if only they applied the same logic here.
Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.
Jello Biafra cuts to the politics of pop