How about a movie about a powerful House committee chairman with a $155,000 salary who buys a million-dollar piece of prime hunting property in Texas with guidance from a seasoned wireless lobbyist, all amid riveting rumors and dumbfounding denials about the lawmaker leaving Congress soon for a big fat pay day as the next president of the Motion Picture Association of America?
Who would play Billy Tauzin? Billy of course! There’s no one better!
The nation’s capital, at once a city of conversation and a caricature of itself, gets off on this stuff. Indeed, as California burns, millions of jobs move to China, appropriations bills languish and the Bush administration’s war on terrorism teeters, topic A in official Washington is Billy Tauzin.
Will he leave Congress at year’s end or fill out his term as House Commerce Committee chairman through 2006? What about that land deal? And who will succeed Tauzin, a Louisiana Democrat-turned-Republican as head of a panel with jurisdiction over the wireless industry, the Federal Communications Commission and most everything else qualifying as big business.
It all has a B-movie feel to it, these hokey press statements by Tauzin and sidekick Ken Johnson that come off collectively as a ridiculous riddle about who will do Hollywood’s bidding in the digital age when octogenarian Jack Valenti steps down at MPAA. Some say it’s a done deal. Tauzin denies it. See what I mean.
It doesn’t matter who’s telling the truth, since we know they all are. What matters is the dance. And Billy can do Fred Astaire.
Were Tauzin to step down as House Commerce Committee chairman and be replaced by Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio) or Joe Barton (R-Texas) or Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.) or someone House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ill.) owes a favor to, this would be a great loss for the mobile-phone industry. It has no greater friend in Congress.
But not so fast.
If you believe content is king, that wireless data is the future and that Gen X, Y and Zers will spend entire paychecks on wireless access-since without it life would be impossible, if not unbearable-then you have to wonder whether the folks Tauzin might soon speak for-Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Universal Studios Inc. and Warner Bros.-will one day run the show in Wireless Land.
So perhaps Billy isn’t leaving us after all. Yes, Billy-ball lives!
I just love happy endings.
