‘Victoria's Secret’ Show Subjected to Scrutiny

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, Nov. 18 — The federal government has received dozens of complains about “The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show,” which aired on ABC Nov. 15, the entertainment industry daily reported.

The Federal Communications Commission said it had received numerous complaints from around the country about the racy lingerie show and the promotional ads that ran with it. FCC commissioner Michael Copps said he had received 50 e-mails the day after the 9 p.m. airing. One came from his own daughter, who is a new mother concerned about the kinds of things her son might be exposed to on TV when he grows up.

Copps said he was forwarding the complaints to the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, asking it to investigate whether ABC violated indecency regulations.

ABC said the show was approved by its Broadcast Standards and Practices department and aired with a TV-14 parental label, allowing parents with V-chip-equipped sets to block it out.

Ann Landers Advises Couple to Get a Room

THE WASHINGTON POST, Nov. 19 — Advice columnist Ann Landers said that the insistence of a Catholic man's parents that their son and his wife, who were married outside the Church, sleep in separate bedrooms when visiting “makes very little sense.”

The man, a 30-year-old fallen-away Catholic, married his girlfriend in a nondenominational ceremony with a nondenominational minister. His parents refused to attend the wedding, and said the couple is not truly married because “our union was not sanctioned by God in the Catholic Church,” the man said in his letter to the advice columnist.

When the man informed his parents that he and his wife would be visiting, they said the couple must sleep in separate bedrooms because “it would be sinful for us to sleep together.”

Landers said the notion that they are “living in sin” because they were not married in the Church made “little sense” to her. But she said that, when visiting, the couple should abide by the rules of another person's home and, Landers suggested, they could stay in a hotel when visiting the parents.

Bush Aide Describes Personal Importance of Faith

THE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, Nov. 19 — President Bush's counselor, Karen Hughes, spoke recently of the importance of faith in her life and work, the Texas daily reported.

The former television reporter and Sunday school teacher at a Presbyterian church said that prayer guided her decision to join Bush's team on his first campaign for Texas governor in 1994, a few years after leaving journalism to raise a child. “I prayed about it and I gradually decided that God really wanted me to do this,” she said at a church-sponsored conference about the importance of faith.

Faith played a role again on Sept. 11, when news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted Hughes to race to the White House, a potential target of further attacks. As she headed there, she said, “Everybody else was going the other way.”

Hughes said she continued on because “it was my job, first of all.”

“But it was more than an act of duty,” she added. “It was an act of faith” in eternal life and the idea that she would not be challenged with something she couldn't handle.