And, the evidence of many empirical studies and much scientific research is that children are susceptible to what they see and hear in movies, music, video games and on television and the Internet. In fact, some children are so susceptible that they end up like the young humanist, nihilistic mass murderers at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Jokela High School in Finland.
If you received advance notice that a child was headed to your local high school with a machine gun, would you take a stand to warn potential victims?
Touche, kind of. I think.
I cannot tell you which child will become the next mass murderer. I cannot tell you which school will be victimized. I can tell you that some child influenced by the media will be the next school killer. I can tell you with certainty that evil movies and video games have a destructive impact on children. Your child may not be the next mass murderer, but he or she may grow up showing no respect for his or her elders. Your child may grow up believing that violence is a just response to a verbal insult. Your child may reject your values and come to believe sin is freedom and righteousness is bondage.See, but the problem is that people have been doing downright awful things since, well, forever. It is ridiculous to argue that popular media has NO effect on culture, and that neither impacts children. I've taught schoolchildren. Apparently 6th graders really, really, like Family Guy.
Incidentally, the idea that you can predict that the next school killer will be a violent videogame nutjob really sets off my BS-meter. What about the Amish Schoolhouse killer? Your absolutes just don't wash, man.
We cannot and will not wait to take a stand until we know which child is about to commit mass murder. We will warn you NOW that as long as horribly violent movies and video games are made available to children, there will be more murders. There will be more abusive boyfriends and husbands. There will be more little girls kidnapped, raped and murdered. And YOU will have all the more reason to live in fear, buy alarm systems and stay home behind locked doors.
Because there was no crime before Xbox?
Ted goes on to toot his own horn several times, pointing out that what he and all his conservative Christian friends would really like to do is just preach the gospel- but alas, they actually care about children, unlike you, you foul, Godless, Halo 3-playing sinner. Ted clinches this via a classic bit of exegesis. "I arbitrarily decided I'm like a watchman. Hey, the Bible says things about watchmen!" Cue random quote from Ezekiel about watchmen. Of course, there are also parts of the Bible that praise people scaling or destroying walls (Joshua at Ai, and God squishing Jericho come to mind). But never mind.
Not to be outdone, Dennis Prager arrives on the scene, and attempts to be even more hair-brained. The column title is, IMO, a little awkward. A better and punchied (and more accurate) one would have been, "Liberals Stink Again." Prager's reason this week? Liberals swear too much. This week's column was apparently inspired by Dennis getting mail, as it consists of nothing more than a running commentary on the latest Rolling Stone. Writes Dennis,
It brings me no pleasure to say that, with few exceptions, the interviews reveal a superficiality and contempt for cultural norms (as evidenced by the ubiquity of curse words) that should scare anyone who believes that these people have influence on American life.
Uh huh. Dennis goes on to quote himself from several months ago saying that "higher civilization" has always seen cursing as a "form of assault on civilization." Of course, this is just as ridiculous as it was back when I first fisked it. Oh, and your quote is redundant, Dennis. Which is funny, given that another argument against cursing is that it impedes your vocabulary.
Since June, Dennis has apparently spent more time ruminating on the subject of how liberals cursing means they hate society:
That is why the amount of public cursing on the left and the way curse words are accepted as part of public and formal discourse may be as significant to understanding the left as anything the left says. It is the left's way of showing rejection of the values of the middle class and of America's Judeo-Christian civilization.Even if this was true- and this is as much a stretch as just about any other Prager argument- perhaps it is indicative that not every one of those values is or should be held as sacrosanct (or at least not all the time), which is the assumption Prager is going on. The idea of the shofar on the High Holidays, for instance, is that it should help shock people out of complacency. Cannot middle-class and JC civ values be a similar form of complacency? Sometimes cursing is acceptable, or at least valid, and arguing that it is never valid because that somehow indicates a hated of supposedly commonly-agreed-upon values is a lazy strawman argument. Cursing does not mean you hate America, or the fictitious JC civ folks like Dennis love to trumpet.
Cue Dennis' cherry-picking of cursing quotes from Rolling Stone.
Chris Rock: " ... Bush f---ed up." "That's a major f---up." "I say some harsh s--t."
Novelist William Gibson: "The s--t you've been doing for the past 400 years …"
George Clooney: " ... my sister and I were quizzed on s--t." "Now you're going to hear about all this s--t." "What the f---'s wrong with you?" China "doesn't give a s—t. ..." "I don't give a s--t." "This war is bulls--t."
Billie Joe Armstrong: "What the f--- are you doing?" " ... when you say 'F--- George Bush' in a packed arena in Texas, that's an accomplishment." "I don't have a f---ing clue what they're talking about." " ... all the f---ed up problems we have." " ... this girl was f---ed up." "Why did I worry so much about this s--t?"
Jon Stewart: "We have a s--tload of guns." " ... that f---ed up everything." "We f---ing declared war on 'em." "... the whole f---ing thing's ours." "Two vandals ... can f--- up your way of life." "I'll take those odds every f---ing day."
Eddie Vedder: "Why the f--- is he doing that?"
Sam Harris: " ... any religious bulls--t."
Meryl Streep: "Oh, f---, why me?"
Tom Hanks: "People have stopped giving a s--t. ..." "Where the f--- have you people been?"
I love this. Every insight or argument that any of these people might be giving or go on to give is tossed in the garbage heap because they said a swear. How enlightened of you, Dennis. Exactly how long are these interviews? A page each? Half a page? And yet you work so dilligently in dismissing them. Class act, my friend.
In response to this, I will receive e-mails cursing me and noting that Vice President Dick Cheney once whispered a curse at Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy – on the floor of the Senate, no less. These e-mailers – and, to be honest, some religious conservatives as well – do not see any difference between cursing in public and using an expletive in a whisper. Many people have lost the ability to judge actions in context or to acknowledge gradations of sin. Is whispering the f-word when one assumes that no one else hears you say it really no different from using that word in a published interview or on a television show?Gradations of sin? Ok, how's this- compared to actual evil being done in the world, none of the above people you've quoted hold a candle. No matter how scatterbrained or wrongheaded you might think Jon Stewart is, he has not raped, killed, or disenfranchised anybody today. He did not beat anyone, he did not steal from anyone, he did not torture anyone. Neither did he assist anyone in doing those evils, or cover them up, or attempt to cover them up.
Those are all real, concrete evils. Those are real sins. There's no need to point out that Republicans curse, both whispered and in public (Ann Coulter faggot remark ring a bell much?). That gives too much legitimacy to your half-brained argument. Even if cursing is a sin, it's way, way, down there. You could more easily make the claim that Stewart is sinning because he ridicules others than in saying "fuck." Your argument is an insult to your readers' intelligence because it imagines that out of all the sins one could attribute to any group- liberals, conservatives, or turducken afficionados, that one can surmise everything about them by the undocumented, subjective OPINION that they CURSE more than other groups. It's absurd.
Pat Boone completes the triumverate. Boldly going where Prager and Baehr only hint, Pat is proud to say he thinks censorship is "just nifty, chums!"
The reflexively liberal media have gleefully reported every "progressive" transgression, often making bigger celebrities of those who openly break taboos, who defy long-established tradition and guidelines of decent behavior. You can make your own list of questionably talented young people who have become headliners via repeated drug arrests, drunken displays, sex videos or making a joke of marriage, motherhood and morality.
Someone refresh my memory: exactly which members of ye olde liberal media have held up Spears or Lohan as positive role models lately? The media has been gleefully reporting their MELTDOWNS. You can find that questionable on its own terms (I think it's kind of sick, frankly), but it's not like they're being heralded as progressive visionaries or something for not wearing underwear or puking in an alley.
No wonder most everybody in the media and entertainment world screams bloody murder at the very mention of the word "censorship." They've reacted so violently, for so long, that they've convinced the general public there's something inherently wrong, even undemocratic, with the concept of censorship.But the fact is: No society can endure without censorship!
Do tell, Pat.
What is the traffic light at the corner but censorship? What is any law, any prohibition about anything – drugs, murder, speeding, theft, perjury, destruction of property – but a society protecting itself against irresponsible, dangerous, even criminal behavior? What is it but a democratic people censoring what some self-centered person might want to do, but that would be offensive or downright destructive to someone else? Law is censorship, and we can't survive without it – especially in a democracy, because, as John Adams pointed out, passions unbridled by religion and morality will inevitably wreak havoc.
Feel free to censor via road laws all you want, Pat, but I don't really think that's what creates a bee in anyone bonnet these days. And indeed, the crucial test is, how does it impact others? As The War On Christmas crowd (including you,) never tires of telling us, just because someone may find something offensive doesn't always mean that the answer is censorship. If removing crosses, Christmas trees and Ann Coulter are wrong, I don't see how you can defend excising Harry Potter or other books that other people find offensive.
Are you sure you meant to put it that way, Pat? Because that pretty much seems to confirm that if you had your way, you'd toss Lolita and other works of literature right into the junkpile. Which, frankly, doesn't make you look too good. You cute folksy Puritan, you.Look at the child pornography case that has just come before our Supreme Court, a vital First Amendment test of Congress' ability to tackle that vile practice in the digital age. Is there anything worse, more indefensible in a free society than the degradation and ruination of innocent children for sexual gratification? How low, base and corrupt can human beings get?
But challengers to any limitations on child porn or its promotion, including the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, say among other things that the legislation in question "might threaten the marketing of 'Lolita'" and other fictional depictions of adolescent sex! Can you grasp the self-serving twisted logic of that argument? In effect, it's the same as saying, "If you deny me the right to sell heroin, it may threaten my chance to sell cocaine!"
See, Pat, if you actually want to seem less crazy, you want to respond to the arguments by saying, "no, we're actually more interested in stopping child porn than trying to limit the ad copy on seven-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar movies." And, frankly, what law does "teen perversion" violate? What justification do you have to ban it?
New York lawyer Michael Bamberger, on behalf of the ABF and other publishing groups, actually said, "Consider the promotional speech on the DVD cover of the film 'Cruel Intentions' that talks of the 'ultimate challenge to ... deflower the headmaster's beautiful, virgin daughter,' played by Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon"! This actually is his warped plea: "Please, your Honors, don't criminalize pedophilia. Next thing you know, we won't be able to market teen perversion!"
Does any sane, reasonable American really believe our Founding Fathers ever meant our Constitution to protect filth, perversion, sickness and sexual vileness – especially victimizing children? No, wise old Ben Franklin stated, "Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom. The more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters."First of all, I personally find the "but what would the Founders think?" argument extremely lazy. Not only do we probably not have a very good way of finding that out (it seems to be notoriously tricky to nail the Founders down on most issues, not only because they didn't leave very well-indexed responsa, but also because, not uncommonly, some of them actually changed their minds about some issues over the course of a lifetime), but given that they're ALL DEAD, it seems more than a little irrelevant. The "WWTFT" question always makes me think of the Oven of Akhnai midrash. The Torah is not in Heaven. And neither is the Constitution. Like it or not, the Founders aren't around anymore to tell us what they thought. And that's probably a good thing. We have a framework, and it's up to us to figure it out for our own times.
Secondly, I find it a little ridiculous that Pat is putting the Founders up on a moral pedestal. Yeah, they were bright. But don't forget the whole slave-owning (and boinking), "Land of the Free as long as you're a White Christian Male" thing.
Our society is indeed becoming corrupt and vicious; the masters it needs are … us! We need to, we must, direct our elected representatives to draft and enact legislation that puts limits on our freedoms of expression, speech and "entertainment." Yes, you can call it "censorship," because that's what it is. BUT with these three provisos: It must be voluntary, self-imposed and majority approved.
Hang on, so Pat Boone is saying we need the government to make laws to tell us what we can and can't see and say and read and hear? Quick, someone tell the Libertarians. Does Joe Farah read your column, Pat? I'd say I hope he fires you for this, but that would be petty. And make me no better than you.
In other words, our nation and its citizens must say, emphatically and legally: "Enough! We will set up a system to regulate what our children, and even decent families, hear and see. As a majority in a democratic society, we will decide the limits on these freedoms, lest they be abused to ruin, corrupt and destroy us. If we can ban smoking in public, we can ban filth, depictions of vile behavior and rank obscenity in public – and on our tax-supported airwaves. We're the majority, and as long as this is a republic, as our Founders meant it to be, you purveyors of filth will have to eat your own excrement. We won't allow you to shovel it on our children!"
Did anyone else see that? Pat ends by telling his opponents to eat their own shit. Where's Dennis Prager when you need him?
Incidentally, the tie-in to my post title is that all these bozos (but especially Pat) reminds me of this "all-time-most popular" editorial over at the Yated Ne'eman.
Yeah. Go you, Pat.
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