Jack Valenti, who passed away on Thursday, was an LBJ political operative who moved to Hollywood to become the film industry’s spokes-hack, a job he kept for nearly four decades. He masterminded the industry’s move from overt self-censorship to a “ratings” system that essentially accomplished the same goals. Lest we forget, Valenti also tried to outlaw home video. In the name of global media monoliths, his successors still regularly harass file sharers, DVD backup software coders, and other harmless li’l guys.

(From BoingBoing.net, here’s a short 2004-compiled list of “stupid” Valenti quotes about the industry.)

Meanwhile, a real Profile in Courage moment came in Champaign, IL on Wednesday, when Roger Ebert appeared at a film festival he’d cofounded, after losing his voice to cancer surgery. As noted by my ol’ UW Daily pal Jim Emerson, now Ebert’s Webmaster, Ebert’s wife spoke on his behalf at the festival, quoting a line from his screenplay for Russ Meyer’s cult classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls–a film the likes of which we may never again see from a U.S.-based producer so long as the MPAA’s secretive ratings thugs still hold sway.