Posted 8:11 PM by Gene

Jack Valenti, who played such a big part in turning the movies into junk, has died. It is apt that that he died on the day after the feds proposed regulating violence in television. That alone is a repudiation of his alphabet soup, of the notion that we can ever trust industry types to police themselves. He will also of course be remembered for waking up to home video at the last second and his typically farsighted notion that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone", and for endearing himself to geeks with his subsequent jabber of DRM and his close friendship with the FBI; for talking of the Johnson White House as though he personally ran it (well, him and Bill Moyers); and for constantly dropping references to his friend Cicero in his speechmaking. In that pestilential Potomac swamp of pompous asses he was a pompous ass nonpareil, and his innumerable "friends" (much as two tarantulas are friends) were, like him, enemies of the people.

Judging from how the hacks are playing it they appear to be almost as upset as with David Halberstam.