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First ballot Hall of Defamer crackpot and former MPAA head Jack Valenti defends the movie ratings system in the opinion pages of today's LAT, arguing that the current G-through-NC-17 guidelines are far superior to the clenched-sphincter, Puritan absurdities of the infamous Hays Code:

Immediately, two movies challenged the code. One was "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" — starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and directed by Mike Nichols. It was a serious film, but it included language never heard before in a Hollywood movie (although by today's standards, it was so mild it could be screened at a nunnery). I quickly flew to Hollywood to meet with an actual living Warner brother — Jack Warner — who ran the studio with an iron fist. We talked for several hours. We finally agreed to take out one "screw," but after protracted negotiation, we left in the phrase "hump the hostess."

When I left the studio, I thought, "How silly can it get? Two grown men discussing such things!"

To our old friend Jack, we offer a heartfelt Huzzah! We can hardly imagine such a crazy-making discussion in this enlightened age! Under the current, near-perfect system, it's nigh unthinkable that two distinguished gentleman might spend days deciding how many seconds one marionette can urinate on another or how many times we can see Kevin Bacon thrust his manhood into a quivering three-way pile of flesh without earning an NC-17 rating. "Hump the hostess," how positively daft!

UPDATE: A reader thought that this "hump the hostess" anecdote sounded suspiciously familiar. Cut the old guy some slack! At his age, he probably can't form any new memories.