Shifting right, or there already?

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y., appeared Wednesday at a Capitol Hill press conference with conservative Republican senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sam Brownback of Kansas and conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to tout their request for $90 million in federal funds for research on how the Internet, i-Pods, and other electronic media affect children's emotional and behavioral development.

The quartet pointed to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation reporting that on average American children spend 6.5 hours a day watching television, staring at Web sites, or using other electronic media.

“We are exposing children to so much media that it is becoming the dominant force in so many children’s lives,” Clinton told reporters.

Hard-shelled cynics might portray her alliance with Santorum, Brownback and Lieberman as a Clinton shift to a more conservative stance, just as some have so interpreted her Jan. 25 speech which stressed the need for teenage sexual abstinence.

But Clinton talked about abstinence in her speech to the abortion rights group NARAL six years ago, even if she didn’t make it her primary focus.

And she co-sponsored the same Santorum-Brownback-Lieberman bill on media exposure last year.

Concerns back in 1996
As she explained in an interview with MSNBC.com Wednesday, her efforts to alert parents to the potentially damaging effects of television date back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.

“We did the V-chip during the Clinton administration, but we didn’t have the full-court press, media public education campaign,” she said.

Clinton argued that “when you tell parents who are working longer hours … single-parent families doing the best they can, that maybe they should think twice about using the television as a baby-sitter, you’ve got to have a lot of good evidence.” Hence her request for $90 million for research.

She also spoke of the need for “media literacy” education and public service announcements on television to warn parents about the effects of exposure to electronic media.

Could the research pave the way for tighter federal regulation of media content? Already Sen. Ted Stevens, R- Alaska, is pushing his bill to increase the penalties for indecent TV and radio programming.

“It’s about looking at both content and process,” Clinton said. She referred to a Kaiser Foundation report last year which found that heavy exposure to TV for children under age two created agitation and diminished ability to concentrate.

Since pundits see every move Clinton makes as a maneuver in a yet-unannounced presidential campaign, Wednesday’s event had the effect of underscoring the idea the former First Lady has not been a doctrinaire cultural liberal and that she has consistently favored working towards conservative goals (preservation of the family, protection of children) by using activist government means.

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