Boston—It’s not that I am without sympathy for Hollywood. At times, the moguls of the entertainment world have, after all, been the innocent victims of false accusations.

Nevertheless, I watched for years with morbid fascination as the entertainment industry denied any link between violent acts on the screen—big or small—and violent behavior in real life. Research piled up 3,000 studies high, showing that violence produces aggressiveness, fearfulness, callousness among young viewers. And so did the excuses.

Even the stars of the so-called capital of liberalism came to sound like the disinformation folk at the Tobacco Industry and the NRA:

“There is no absolute proof that violence begets violence.”

“We live in a violent society; we didn’t create it.”

“Movies don’t kill people; people kill people.”

But finally, grudgingly and belatedly, a klatch of powerful entertainment figures is openly admitting that an overdose of violent viewing is harmful for children and other living creatures. It’s almost as if the tobacco companies had finally confessed that smoking caused lung cancer.

In a breakthrough or at least a slow, grinding turnaround, four television networks agreed last week under congressional pressure to put a warning label on violent programs.

Maybe these much-heralded warnings merit a laugh track more than applause. After all, in this two-year trial the labels will only go on programs that the networks’ own standards (!) departments decide are violent. They will appear on exactly one program in the fall: “NYPD Blue.” Moreover, the itty-bitty warning will merely flash on the screen before the program and during the break. And it will read—Wimp Alert!—”Due to some violent content, parental discretion advised.”

One “next step” that’s been suggested for television is the so-called “V-chip” which would allow the technologically non-phobic parent—you know who you are, both of you—to program violent shows off their set. Another step would follow the Europeans and relegate these shows for the late night hours.

The problem of violent entertainment is not only a problem of what appears on the networks, by no means the worst culprits, or even on television.

The most dour, if not downright dismal, comment that accompanied the networks’ announcement was CBS’s Howard Stringer’s warning about the warnings: “We don’t want to turn the vast wasteland into the dull wasteland.” Are these our options: mayhem or boredom?

Violence is the easy way in and out of a story. Is that all Hollywood offers now: cheap thrills or no thrills?

This is the time, no it’s past time, for the star-studded names of Hollywood, the talent behind distant political causes and far-flung action committees, to change the world a bit closer to home. There is work to be done behind the scenes and against the acts … of violence.