Here's what I need to know. Who decided that violence is entertaining? In particular, who decided that violence against women is entertainment? It's my experience that pretty much every night of the week on TV, the entertainment involves murder, in particular a murdered woman. It, therefore, does not surprise me when a guy like Dave Adolphson shoots his wife in the head in the St. Mary's Hospital parking lot.
Shows like CSI and the Law and Order franchise, among many others, portray grisly detailed violence against women over and over and over. They make the Adolphson shooting seem normal.
Now, maybe I'm taking myself too seriously, but who made violence entertaining? Why is it fun to watch a fictional crime scene investigator bashing in the skull of a mannequin? Who said it was entertaining to see murder after murder after murder on TV?
It seems to me that the good guys on TV are just as bad as the bad guys. Sure there is evil in the world. But must it be stopped by good guys doing bad things to make the world "safer?" It seems like it's just a cycle of violence. The good guys punish the bad guys for punishing the good guys' women.
When I was a lad, the violence was served up, well, a little less violently. Sky King never bashed in a skull or shot a villain 22 times. Lassie never chewed the arm off a fleeing felon. And even Pampero Firpo, Wild Bull of the Pampas, only bloodied Doctor X rarely.
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Comic books were the most lurid entertainment of my youth. The Fantastic Four were dynamos of crime fighting drama. And, thankfully, their skin-tight suits were, well, entertaining. Wonder Woman, was, well...a wonder, and she also fought crime.
I wonder why we need to fight crime? Why is it a "war" on drugs? Aren't people who use and sell drugs sad, lonely and hurting? Is there a way we can be kind and compassionate toward them instead of mean and cruel? Who said we need to have a "war" on terrorism? Death is death; sad, lonely and cruel, whether you're American or Middle Eastern, Christian or Muslim, good guy or bad guy.
When I heard President Bush say on national TV that we will hunt the terrorists down and kill them, it didn't strike me as a compassionate response. It struck me as repaying evil with evil, which strikes me as weak, short sighted and ineffective.
I'm assuming there is a smart person or two out there who can explain why war is good and violence entertaining, explain why violence against women in particular has become big business. They would probably go back to Shakespeare trying to sell tickets, trying to fill the seats in the Globe theater, and tell me that melodrama is better than actual violence in the streets, tell me that the pseudo violence of comic books and the hype of All Star Wrestling are preferable parodies of the real thing -- that making violence entertaining for the purpose of making money is okay, is the lesser of two evils. Oh well, if you must, but it strikes me that faux violence is still violent and that to popularize violence in any form is weak, short sighted and ineffective.
Oh well, I'm tired of the violence in all forms and have pretty much turned network TV off for good. That's except for Deal or No Deal, because it's always refreshing to see unvarnished greed at work.
Life's good. Let's make it better. I'm Mike Savage, and I'm done.
Mike Savage is a Superior-based author, publisher and radio commentator. Contact him at mail@savpress.com or see his Web page, www. savpress.com.
