Marijuana Message Burns Up TV Viewer : Media: A public access cable program celebrating the illegal substance ignites the anger of a former Moorpark councilwoman.

Former Moorpark Councilwoman Eloise Brown was sitting at home one afternoon this week when her daughter called with an unusual request.

“Turn on Channel 8,” she said, “And don’t hang up. I want to hear you.”

Brown got up, turned on the television and--as closely as she can remember--uttered the words, “Oh my God,” followed almost immediately by, “What the hell are they doing now?”

There, on her screen in blaring capital letters were the words, “HEMP, HEMP, HURRAY!” against a background of changing colors, circles and squares and accompanied by cartoon music. The segment ran for an hour.

Alarmed that her cable system’s public access channel was being used to lead cheers for marijuana, Brown herself picked up the phone and called a Ventura County Cablevision customer relations representative, who told her that the image on her screen was someone’s artistic statement.

“Precisely what is artistic about cannabis?” asked an outraged Brown, who the next morning visited the company’s Westlake Village offices and discovered the show was the product of Michael Lippmann of Newbury Park.

Lippmann and his co-producer, Shernett Bullett, also watched the program’s first installment Monday--one of four scheduled to run on the channel through the month.

“It just cracked us up,” Lippmann said. “This is just harmless. It’s amusing. It doesn’t hurt anybody. It just says, ‘Hooray for our side,’ and it’s a nice thing to do.”

Lippmann said that the basic “hooray” message is the centerpiece of all of the shows, but that the three words are built upon in future broadcasts which will include hemp facts running across the screen and a wider variety of graphics. The second show will air at 4 p.m. on Monday, and subsequent editions on Nov. 22 and Nov. 29.

“It’s entertainment,” said Lippmann, 35, who says he has worked as a busboy, department store security guard, tattoo artist and rifle instructor, and is currently unemployed. “It’s to get people saying, ‘Gee, what does that mean?’ and maybe they’ll go out and find out for themselves instead of just listening to the basic lies that have been told about it for so long.”

But the program obviously had something other than its desired effect on Brown, who questioned why it is being shown in the afternoon when children could be watching. She has forwarded Lippmann’s name to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department for closer scrutiny.

“We’re dealing with a controlled substance, and if this individual chooses it as his lifestyle, that’s one thing, that’s a personal thing,” Brown said. “But to try and convince others to adopt that lifestyle is no longer a personal issue, it becomes an affront to the community.”

Even so, the councilwoman who served from 1986 to 1990 said she understands that the cable company has little ability to censor public access programming.

“It’s not censorship,” Brown said. “We’re talking about a matter of taste and selecting the time--4 a.m. is a good time.”

Dave LaRue, president of Ventura County Cablevision, which serves 90,000 customers in Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Oak Park, Ojai, Agoura and Calabasas, said that public access programming allows wide freedom of expression except in cases of extreme obscenity or explicit sexuality.

“The law limits our ability to scrutinize rather dramatically,” LaRue said. “You can advocate an activity that’s illegal, such as the use of marijuana, and that’s protected speech. We have no ability to decide whether or not to show that . . . . There’s nothing obscene about that, there’s nothing profane about that. It’s a point of view.”

LaRue said that the show was scheduled and broadcast before anyone on his staff had a chance to review its content, and said he would investigate the possibility of moving its time slot to later in the evening.

Lippmann is not a newcomer to public access, having produced a handful of other shows including one 30-minute program that simply featured the words, “KILL YOUR TELEVISION.”

One of his goals with the current program, he said, is to educate the public on some of the legal uses of hemp that have been established over the years, such as to make paper, rope and other materials.

“Hemp isn’t just pot, hemp has about 50,000 uses,” he said. As one possible use, Lippmann suggested fire-burned hillsides be reseeded with hemp plants, which grow quickly and could help prevent mudslides.

“If you plant marijuana, within 30 days of germination it grows a 12-inch root and it’ll hold those hillsides together,” he said. “They could drop this stuff by helicopter all over the hills of Malibu.”

And for his part, Lippmann said he doesn’t fear the heightened scrutiny the show may bring him, either from the community or law enforcement.

“I’m a hippie,” he said. “I’m not sure what happens at the end of this life. I have a pretty good idea, but this is my only shot at having a human body and for someone to regulate what I do with this small amount of time, relatively, that I have, is just offensive.”