Valenti's Credits Keep on Rolling

Motion Picture Association of America chief executive Jack Valenti testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1984. (By James K.w. Atherton -- The Washington Post)

Jack's back.

Eighty-four years old, with a silver tongue and a silken touch, Jack Valenti is still working the halls of Congress more than a year after he stepped down as chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America.

"Retirement is a synonym for decay," he said after testifying about indecency before the Senate Commerce Committee two weeks ago. "I am very much alive, and alert and working."

A Washington fixture for more than four decades, Valenti rose to prominence as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, was Hollywood's ambassador to Capitol Hill under eight presidents and has survived into the Jack Abramoff era as a lobbyist's lobbyist untainted by scandal and unmatched in his ability to keep politicians of all stripes purring.

In three appearances before the Senate Commerce Committee over the past three months, Valenti has sought to ward off fresh federal regulation of indecency on TV with a blend of public oratory and private persuasion that left even senators envious of his political skills. Though appearing as a private citizen at the committee's invitation, Valenti continues to be a policy player because of his legacy developing the movie-ratings system and his rare ability to referee among media moguls.

Former agriculture secretary Dan Glickman succeeded Valenti in the MPAA top job, but it turns out there's no replacing him on center stage in a congressional hearing. In the first minute of a Senate presentation last November, Valenti praised Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) as "two great war heroes," told Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) that his father "was one of the great senators that I've ever known" and lauded John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) for coming from "the greatest family in America for caring about America."

With allusions to the Vietnam War, Edward Albee's 1962 play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film "Blow-Up," in which "for about 10 seconds, little teenyboppers were cavorting in the nude," he then developed a passionate defense of freedom of speech.

"Of all the clauses in the Constitution, the one that I admire the most, and venerate the most, are 45 words which compose the First Amendment," he told lawmakers, arguing that the best way to keep children from indecency on TV was to educate parents about the existing TV-ratings system, which is modeled on the one he helped devise for Hollywood in 1968.

"It has to be self-regulatory. Otherwise you begin to torment and torture the First Amendment, and I know you don't want that," he added.

Two weeks ago, after extensive negotiations among television broadcasters, cable and satellite TV companies and consumer-electronics makers, Valenti unveiled plans for a $250 million to $300 million advertising and outreach campaign to teach parents how to use their TVs to block inappropriate content from their kids.

Combined with new family-friendly packages offered by cable and satellite companies, the net result has been to slow momentum toward tighter federal laws on indecency.

"World champ," said Martin D. Franks, an executive vice president at CBS Corp., which is part of the industry group backing the plans. "I have been with him, and I have been against him, and being with him is much better."