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It's also not as easy as it sounds. Some decisions by media companies may seem like no-brainers. How many rap songs about slicing women's throats does the world really need? But most other judgments of taste are more difficult calls. Both of the films that Dole deplored, Natural Born Killers and True Romance, happen to have been written by Quentin Tarantino. He's also the explosively gifted director of Pulp Fiction, the great cockeyed movie where that guy quotes from the Bible and the gun goes brrrr and some younger viewers think it's cool-lots of older viewers too. In the effort to achieve a kid-friendlier culture, do we want to end up with a sanitized one, free of the worst excesses of "death metal" but also purged of Tarantino? Or of sassy but not salacious rappers like Salt-N-Pepa? Or even, let it be said, deprived of the mixed bag of gifts and gas that is Oliver Stone?
The culture wars won't just be conducted in board rooms and at candidates' debates. For some time to come, they will surely be going on within our families and homes, and sometimes within ourselves as well.
--REPORTED BY JAMES CARNEY AND MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON, PATRICK E. COLE AND MARGOT HORNBLOWER/LOS ANGELES AND JOHN MOODY/NEW YORK