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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 4/29/99 If things go according to schedule, we should see another Littleton (or Pearl or Jonesboro or West Paducah) in a few weeks. Next time, some teens have told me, the shooters and bombers may go for body count. We adults may be wringing our hands in dispair, but we adults are hypocrites and liars. We decided a long time ago that our children are nothing more than a profit center, a prime slice of demographics for the free market to ingest. Violence sells, and that's precisely what we've been selling to our kids. It's the ultimate triumph of laissez-faire capitalism---the bottom line is all that matters. If it sells, it must be good. Do the math. The top-grossing movie this week is "The Matrix," where violence is sleek, slow motion, and cyber-sexy. Eight of the ten top rated shows on cable TV are the staged strut of ultra-violent pro wrestling. The best-selling video games are variations of the gore and mayhem of "Doom" and its clones. Even the reaction to the Colorado slaughter is tempered by how much money it generates. Howard Stern quips that he wonders whether the Columbine High shooters had sex with any of the girls before killing them. The Colorado legislature erupts in protest. All that means to Stern and his corporate masters is that more publicity's been generated, and they spelled his name right. Why doesn't Infinity Broadcasting (which owns Stern as well as the radio station where I work) do anything? Duh. Stern is a mega-profit center. The $5.9 million he paid for his new digs in Manhattan is just a tiny taste of the kind of cash he generates. Meanwhile, a radio announcer in Charlotte and another in Kansas City are fired for making insensitive cracks about the murders. Why the double standard? Double duh. Those two are local yokels, while Stern has made a lot of people rich. And let's face it, it's money that matters. If your closest neighbor sold his house, and it was turned into a methamphetamine lab or a crack house, what would your reaction be? Yet, if you're like most of us, you probably don't think too much about the greed-is-God anything-for-a-buck culture that's set up shop in your house. Violence is being sold as antiseptic, cool, and incredibly sexy. It's the perfect message for the isolationist world we've created. In years past, beleive it or not, life was a communal affair. You knew your neighbors. Several generations were raised under the same roof. You would walk through the neighborhood. Now neighbors are strangers, the kids are in school, the parents are at work, and the grandparents are hundreds of miles away, or in an old folks home, or both. Sidewalks just let undesirables too poor to own cars walk through, so we've retreated into pathetic suburban boxes where we can antiseptically segue from our house to our car without having to set foot outside. It's the ultimate triumph of selfishness disguised as self-reliance. Everyone is only concerned with their own patch of turf, their own beliefs, their own kids. We've decided that the unbfettered free market is the ultimate good, and that it's every man for himself. The kids know we're the ones who created the atmosphere of greed, selfishness, and violence. And the only thing that surprises them is that we're surprised at its results. |
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