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This Just In: Free speech

A shameful -- and shameless -- performance

By Dan Kennedy

Who could be low enough to exploit tragedy and suffering for cheap political gain? US Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), that's who.

Last November, Brownback presided over a hearing on rock music that starred the father of a 15-year-old suicide victim whose demise was allegedly hastened by listening to Marilyn Manson. This past Tuesday, Brownback was at it again -- this time with the assistance of a teacher from Jonesboro, Arkansas, who testified that one of the young suspects in the recent school shootings there was inspired by Tupac Shakur and Bone Thugs 'N Harmony.

Brownback ought to be ashamed. Then again, shame would be a novel concept to him.

Last summer, for instance, at a hearing into campaign-finance improprieties, Brownback pressed a witness about payments to Democratic fundraiser John Huang. "So, no raise money, no get bonus?" the senator asked, startling those present. Brownback's racist performance won him Esquire's "Charlie Chan Strength-Through-Diversity Award" in its annual "Dubious Achievements" issue.

Earlier this year, Brownback was cleared of fundraising improprieties of his own stemming back to the 1996 campaign. Apparently, though, the investigation into those alleged improprieties was less than impressive: a headline in the Kansas City Star called the probe "a sorry excuse for the truth."

Brownback's current Democratic challenger claims that, in 1996, Brownback's polling firm tried to drive up his numbers among the anti-Semitic set by asking respondents whether they knew his opponent was a Jew. (A Brownback spokesman denied the allegation.)

Brownback says he's a libertarian, but he's anti-choice and enjoys the support of Christian-right hatemonger James Dobson and morals cop William Bennett. So it's understandable that free-speech advocates are wary of his insistence that his hearings on the music industry are strictly informational and that he opposes ratings or any other kind of government regulation.

Among those advocates is Nina Crowley, who heads the Massachusetts Music Industry Coalition and who sought unsuccessfully to testify at the Tuesday hearing. Crowley could not be reached for comment. But in the Internet newsletter free! (published by the Freedom Forum at http://www.freedomforum.org), Crowley denounced the hearing as "a staged bit of theater by Senator Brownback," adding: "Once again the hearings will manipulate the grieving in an effort to vilify popular music."