And while the move certainly runs the risk of enraging some of the Democrats' deep-pocketed Hollywood friends, a senior advisor to Gore claims the campaign not only will allow, but welcome Lieberman's position.

"I think he's brought to the ticket some real credibility on this issue," the senior advisor says. "And it's an issue that's real important to people, especially to families. And where you find this level of concern is with working families -- families where both parents are working, and the kids have a lot of time on their own where they're unsupervised. And that's where it really shows up in anecdotal evidence, focus groups and polls."

Thus, the Gore team is confident that Lieberman's testimony will only benefit the Democratic ticket. "If anything, it would raise questions if Lieberman didn't testify, since he's already taken unfair criticism that he's been abandoning his principles and his stance on this issue," says Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's Senate communications director.

"One way to clear up any doubts is to take a stand on this report, which he's been closely involved with," Gerstein says. The hearing has been tentatively slotted for Sept. 13.

After all, the FTC report only exists because, in a May 1999 amendment to the Juvenile Justice bill that passed 98-0, Lieberman joined with Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sam Brownback of Kansas to call for the FTC and Justice Department to study the issue of the entertainment industry marketing excessively violent content to minors. The next month, President Clinton ordered the investigation.

While the FTC's study has yet to be released, it reportedly reaches the conclusion that "movie studios, record companies and video game producers are aggressively marketing violent entertainment products to children even as they label the material inappropriate for young audiences," according to a report in Sunday's Washington Post.

Lieberman has long been an outspoken critic of the entertainment media, becoming a hero to conservatives and a scold to the Left Coast. In 1993, hearings he held through a governmental affairs subcommittee resulted in a video game ratings system. Offended by the raciness on TV (he once said "Friends" should be shown late at night, or even in theaters), he asked the Federal Communications Commission in May to make sure broadcasters were meeting the "public interest standard."

In 1995, he teamed up with values czar William Bennett to bash Time Warner for releasing CDs by "gangsta rap" artists Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice-T and Dr. Dre, and TV in general for running the Jerry Springers of the world. He also issued, along with Bennett, an annual "Silver Sewer Award" that went last year to Fox television for -- among other notorious bits -- a TV show that had a teenage girl commenting, "Hmm. Not bad," after checking out her stepbrother's package as he stepped out of the shower.

"People are concerned about this issue and he's going to be speaking to a broad range of the political spectrum who are looking to their leaders to give voice to their concerns," Gerstein says. "It's a classic example of good policy making good politics."

It might not seem that way to Democratic friends in Hollywood when the report is made public. According to a source familiar with the report, the hearing stands to make some pretty big waves, slamming the movie, music and videogame industries for purposely marketing inappropriate content to kids. "It's the categorical nature of the report that's impressive," the source says. "These marketing processes have been across the board, pervasive and intentional."

"The impact of the report will be a profound one for the industry," the source says.

In its yearlong study of the issue, the FTC initiated several undercover surveys of retailers, where underage children attempted to buy tickets to movies recommended for older audiences. Roughly 50 percent of the time, according to the source familiar with the FTC study, they were able to buy the tickets. Ratings systems for edgy music and violent interactive video games did almost nothing to prevent kids from purchasing the materials, according to the report.

Moreover, the FTC report claims that while ratings systems for these products are either unenforced half the time (in the case of film), or almost entirely unenforced (for music and video games), media companies market these same products to kids by targeting TV shows, Web sites and magazines. As a result, the report might change the issue from whether Hollywood is occasionally, gratuitously obscene, to whether, according to the source, the "industry been using its rating system in a very duplicitous way, as a cover to market the products to kids."

Ouch. Republicans throughout the Senate are wondering if what may turn into a particularly nasty and contentious issue will keep Lieberman from his off-year crusade. They wonder if Hollywood will lean on Gore to lean on Lieberman to back off.

After all, even before the FTC report, Variety magazine's editor in chief, Peter Bart, wrote a scathing column during the convention, addressed to the Democratic delegates, in which he noted that "much as your new leaders may disdain the entertainment industry, it's still a bountiful source of money, and its glitterati help jazz up a political dinner ... So in return you've given us Senator Joe, a man who ... viscerally distrusts the ability of citizens to determine their own sources of entertainment."

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