I just mistakenly read the Nichloas Berg thread(I skip these threads usually now) because I had no idea who he was. Can you tell I haven’t turned on the news or read a paper in a few weeks? I wouldn’t even have known anything about the US treatment of prisoners if my mother hadn’t called me from France about it.
Anyway, reading that thread reminded me of something I saw this weekend. I was in the middle of a long ride and refueing at a water fountain at a local park when I saw some kids, maybe 10 years old, about to start a water gun fight. The dialogue went something like this:
Kid #1: I’m (I didn’t quite catch who he said)
Kid #2: Well, I’m Osama Bin Laden! He’s bad, man. No one can catch him!
Kid#3 Well, I’m Al Qaeda!
What happened to Voltron, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles, etc…?
Not really that surprising. I can remember playing the most horrible, cruel games when I was a kid. Not necessarily mean to one another, but had someone overheard, they’d of been as shocked as you. I have never again been as vulgar or as surrounded by it as when I was 12-13 years old.
Strangely, it’s part of being a boy. Pyschologists say that we subconsciously start playing at war and preparing ourselves to fight and die. Blame evolution or nature or design, whatever you want to call it.
It is pretty sad. Last night I abused myself by watching Enterprise. I know that pop culutre has been on the decline for a while now, and that my generation turned out okay despite the Three Stooges, but bear with me here. In one scene, an alien character stabs another alien character in the heart(a la that horrible scene in Saving Private Ryan) and then, while holding the knife, still dripping blood, up to his victim’s face, tells him that once all humans have been killed, he will hunt down the man’s wife and children and kill every single one of them.
Having only read the Berg thread a little while before, it was still fresh in my mind, and it drew a pretty bleak picture of how normalized ultra-violent scenes have become in our culture. If prime-time network shows will air something like that on a show watched by a lot of kids(I think), what won’t they show? And we sit there, acting all shocked, but watching nonetheless.
Then, during a commercial break, there was a teaser for the 11:00 news. This airhead brunette with frosted lipgloss and a very low-cut blouse(the news anchor, if you can believe it) sits there smiling alluringly while she reports that coyotes have been reported hunting near a local elementary school, and that municipal authorities have declared a state of emergency.
So I’m with you, jaylew, I don’t watch the news at all. I read the business news, and might check out the headlines on cnn.com once a day, but that’s about it. I find I’m much happier that way.