Coming to a senator near you: The PTC

Brent Bozell is mobilizing his forces in an effort to get the Decency Enforcement Act of 2004 dislodged, onto the Senate floor for a vote, and eventually over to that big desk in the Oval Office. Visitors to the website of the Parents Television Council are being urged to urge their senator to get S. 2056 passed.

"As you know, Congress is considering legislation that would severely punish broadcasters who violate indecency laws," writes PTC. "Unfortunately that legislation has stalled in the US Senate. If the Senate doesn't vote in this bill, S. 2056, in the next few days, it will likely die."

PTC provides access to the full body of senatorial websites, and encourages correspondents to use their own language in carrying out the task at hand. However, for the compositionally challenged, PTC does provide a template awaiting only the correspondents name underneath the word "Sincerely."

The template letter concludes, "I am outraged that such an important piece of legislation - - one I might add, that has the support of millions of families -- - would be allowed to languish. I am writing today to ask you to vote on S. 2056 immediately. Don't let the broadcasters sweep our national outrage under the rug."

RBR observation:

We are rapidly getting to the point where we need a new standard to measure the level of public outrage. In the not-so-distant past, when snail mail ruled the world, a 1,000 letter protest was a firestorm - - to get that many people to type or pen a letter, look up a distant address, write it on an envelope, lick a stamp and get it into the postal system was really a special event. Are 100,000 mouse clicks equal to 1,000 real letters? We don't know. But we do know this: The clickers do not have nearly the impact of writers, and we need a new standard before we feel we should be expected to be duly impressed.

Secondly, this is one of the few pieces of legislation we are aware of which has attracted nearly universal support on Capitol Hill - - Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative - - they've all joined hands and were tripping over one another to be the loudest and most effective supporter of the Decency Act.

So why the languishing? We have a call into the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). You'll be the first to know if and when we find out anything solid.