Rep. Eshoo recently spoke with Ralph Gardner about the CALM Act, her legislation which prevents television advertisements from playing at a volume noticeably higher than the programs during which they air. Eshoo sponosored and wrote the legislation in the House, which was signed by the President just last year. An excerpt of the article is below:
Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re lying in bed minding your own business and watching late-night TV. Suddenly the program goes to commercial and the volume explodes. Your spouse, awakened from slumber, turns over and wants to know when you’re going to turn off the damn TV and go to sleep.
I discovered Congresswoman Eshoo’s name and the fact that the legislation was about to go into effect when I vaguely remembered that some law addressing the problem had been passed, yet the commercials seemed as loud as ever. I was heading down to Washington a few weeks ago and I went online looking for someone to drop by and complain to. That’s when I discovered that the bill was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Dec. 15 of last year, taking effect 12 months later.
“The president said, ‘This is such a good bill,'” Congresswoman Eshoo, a Democrat, recalled, the commander in chief apparently launching into his own tale of TV-watching woe, “‘it’s a two-page bill.’ I said, ‘Mr. President, it was a one-page bill until the Senate got ahold of it.'”
She identified the need for the legislation the same way the rest of us do every time the show we’re watching goes to commercial and the volume rises to that of a 747 revving its engines for takeoff, or the No. 7 train grinding to a halt at Grand Central: She couldn’t hear herself think.
“My family was at my house; I think it was a holiday,” she recalled. “They were watching a game and the ads came on. I kept yelling, ‘Would you please lower that thing!’ My brother-in-law said to me, ‘You’re a member of congress. Why don’t you fix it?'”
My hunch is she has a bright political future. I’d certainly vote to reelect her if I lived in Palo Alto or Half Moon Bay. “I teased my staff that I kill myself with complex pieces of legislation and the epitaph on my stone will be the CALM Act,” she said. “The letters I get from people all over the country: “I’m a Republican. I live in Texas. Come here and run for governor. I’ll support you and you’ll win.”
To read the full article, please click here.
