All the King’s Men, by the late Robert Penn Warren, just might be the greatest American political novel. I also love Robert Rossen’s classic film adapted from the book, and now Sony is releasing a second ATKM-based movie (image).
May I suggest that the spirit of Huey Long, the crooked Southern politician on whom Warren loosely based Willie Stark, is alive and well in Washington, D.C.? Don’t just enjoy Warren’s luscious prose and see Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate “Titanic” Winslet in the latest ATKM film. Also read Washington’s Once and Future Lobby in Sunday’s Washington Post. Would you believe, some $200 million per month is going to the inf-ped crowd in D.C.—$2.4 billion annually. One lobbyist estimates that $1 million spent on lobbying buys $100 million in benefits from Uncle, which, if you do the math, adds up to $240 billion a year for K Street‘s clients. Would that the U.S. government itself were as efficient.
Here at the TeleBlog, we’re especially grumpy about Hollywood’s use of lobbying to perpetrate and perpetuate such anticonsumer copyright legislation such as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. I myself have taken a fond interest in the Act in regard to former Sen. John Edwards, a probable Democratic presidential candidate in the 2008 primaries.
Edwards, whom I in many respects like from afar because of his utterances on such issues as the P word, poverty, is a lawyer who served on a copyright-related Senate committee. But he still has yet to utter a word against the Hollywood-bought extension act despite repeated requests to do so. I don’t mind the $900K donations that an Edwards PAC has received from from just one Hollywood producer alone, but I do mind his refusal to explain the full circumstances behind the gifts—or his refusal to oppose the Bono Act and the DMCA even though elitist legislation like Bono would appear to be the antithesis of his populist rhetoric. Over time, the Bono Act will siphon billions to the entertainment elite from schools, libraries and the rest of us. It is why, today, schoolchildren cannot download The Great Gatsby for free.
A populist’s Faustian bargain?
You’d think that John Edwards, whose wife at one point even wanted to teach literature, would set an example for other Democrats. Why doesn’t he care? From the perspectives of consistency and aptness—applying that much-vaunted “populism” and also factoring in his past membership on the copyright-related Judiciary Committee—Edwards would be a good target for a net.campaign to get him to take a stand. If he ignores it, just what will his continued silence mean?
Is John Edwards, the self-made “populist,” in some ways a real-life Willie Stark who espouses populism yet quietly sells out to the sleazier elements of the corporate world, striking a Faustian bargain to avoid going after issues too problematic for his campaign donors? Just what kind of a relationship does he have with the PodestaMattoon lobbying firm, a key player in Democratic politics? Far from hating John Edwards, I might even be interested in personally endorsing him (the TeleBlog is nonpartisan) if his populism extended to copyright. But first he needs to clarify where he stands. This is not just an arcane Internet issue. It is a litmus test of character—one way to show that on Hollywood-related matters, Edwards is not Willie—and I hope he passes it.
Good advice for Edwards, especially on copyright issues: TheBivingsReport has quoted a pol hoping for the Net vote: “I’m trying to retrain and recondition myself when I get asked a question to actually answer it—to not say what I’ve been trained to say, to not say what’s careful and cautious.” Wise advice. And yes, you guessed right—the quote is from none other than John Edwards, the man who is so resolutely mute on Bono.
