EW YORK - George W. Bush brought the hopes of his campaign to the bright lights of New York City yesterday, mocking Al Gore along the way as an actor for criticizing Hollywood titans about entertainment violence and later taking their money at a fund-raiser.
Continuing his attack on the Democratic nominee's credibility, Bush said: ''It seems like he must be auditioning for a Broadway play because he keeps changing his tune.
''At the beginning of the week, he sounded awfully tough on Hollywood. He talked about `six months' [to make reforms] and sanctions. He talked tough language. After a couple of fund-raisers, he's changing his tune,'' Bush said at an appearance in Perrysville, Pa., en route to New York.
The Republican nominee was reacting to the Democratic ticket's tepid criticism of the entertainment industry Monday night at a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills. The $4.2 million donated was a record for a political fund-raiser at a private home. Among the 300 guests were actor Tom Hanks and studio executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks.
''We will nudge you, but we will never become censors,'' Gore's running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, told the crowd.
Gore mentioned the ''controversy of the previous week,'' but avoided any talk of regulation.
Last week, in reaction to a Federal Trade Commission report about violence in children's movies and video games, Lieberman told a Senate committee that he and Gore would take action against industry executives who did not reform their practices within six months. After that, Gore pledged to seek sanctions.
The charge of anti-Hollywood hypocrisy was Bush's second sharp rebuke of Gore this week. On Monday, in the wake of a Globe report, Bush pounced on the vice president for telling a campaign audience that his mother-in-law paid nearly three times as much for the same prescription arthritis medication as the family pays for its dog, Shiloh.
The Gore campaign later admitted the details were lifted not from the family's medical bills but from a House Democratic study of prescription drug prices.
Bush said in an interview Monday: ''I have been always concerned about Vice President Gore's willingness to exaggerate in order to become elected. He's exaggerated about my record for a long period of time. Now he's exaggerating about family members of his.''
Later that day, Gore recalled for a Teamsters audience in Las Vegas about being raised on union lullabies, singing out, ''Look for the union label.'' The popular song was not written until 1975, when Gore was 27.
Yesterday, before a crowd in the Great Hall in suburban Pittsburgh, Bush returned to the Hollywood theme, saying it was time to ''call in these captains of the entertainment industry and explain to them loud and clear that our country can do a better job of raising our children.''
A Gore spokeswoman, Kym Spell, said it was Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, who were being hypocritical - in their case, on the subject of oil prices. During the appearance yesterday in Perrysville, Bush told one questioner that the nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries must increase crude oil production to reduce gasoline prices in the United States. Last year, while still the head of Halliburton Co., an oil-services giant, Cheney told a group of oil executives that reduced production levels would help companies such as his.
''I think it's time for the big oil ticket to decide. Do they want oil production increased, as Governor Bush now says, or reduced as Dick Cheney previously urged?'' Spell asked.
As to the fund-raising charge, she said: ''What the vice president did was to provide leadership after he took a look at the FTC report. He took that message out to Hollywood. I think what would be hypocritical would be if he took money from a group and supported policies they wanted us to support.''
Bush's stated focus of the day was his proposal to reduce the so-called marriage penalty that occurs when working couples end up paying more taxes as newlyweds than they paid as individuals.
The governor highlighted one couple, Dan Steele and Vicky Trybend of Castle Shannon, Pa., who will be married the day after Thanksgiving. The 28-year-olds face an additional joint filing burden of $996. Under Bush's proposal to restore the 10 percent deduction for two-income married couples, their extra tax would be $91 - or 91 percent less.
Gore has proposed a $500 billion package of tax cuts, including marriage-penalty relief, but Steele and Trybend would see their bill fall 40 percent under the Gore plan.
Bush cast the difference between him and Gore in a larger, philosophical light.
''His vision of government is it's the role of Washington to pick and choose winners and losers,'' the governor said. ''That's not the way I view the role of government. I think government needs to be fair, even-handed.''
