Shootings Call For School, Parental and TV Reforms

Authorities at Santee, Calif. -- and sociologists everywhere -- are trying to explain why a 14-year-old schoolboy stole his father’s pistol to kill two classmates and wound 13 others.

Within the week, gun incidents in schools were reported in 12 other states. In one, a young girl in Pennsylvania shot and wounded another girl.

It is said that society in general has failed juvenile murderers. My friend Mel in San Diego, with whom I was exchanging e-mail on the day of the Santee shooting, added a poignant P.S. “Had another Columbine- type shooting here today. This is what comes from banning prayer in schools.”

Mel is partly right, but the principal blame lies first on the shooter. He was well into the “age of reason” and will be tried for murder as an adult. Sad, sad, sad -- for his and his victims’ wasted lives.

Then Mel, me and all other adults are to blame -- as cowards for failing to speak out against the coarsening of social conduct. We murmur about the decline in civility but are afraid of Visigoths battering the city gates.

The principal enemy is TV, exemplar of the picture worth a thousand words.

Newton Minow, head of the Federal Communications Commission in 1961 warned the National Association of Broadcasters that they were turning television into a “vast wasteland.”

Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned us two decades ago that we were “dumbing deviancy down.”

Yet, we are up to our chins in obscenity, pleading: “Don’t make a wave!”

The sad fact is that we are afraid of our kids. They have not been reared by us but by 30-inch TV screens in our living rooms. Pimps for silver-screen producers are movie moguls, television networks, advertising agencies and corporations sponsoring trash.

Every evening the main net and cable shows portray sexual acts accompanied by tongue swallowing and fervent moaning. Cures of “erectile dysfunction” or “vaginal dryness” are prime-time advertising staples.

Vomit and dog-doo are popular eye-poppers this season. MTV’s constant crotch wiggling, and shock-jocks’ preoccupation with deviancy, fascinate teenagers coping with hormonal development.

Everything is in-your-face – from idiot wrestling to vulgar rapping. Don’t “dis me” or I will blow your brains out. If you criticize me, you’re a bigot.

Just to test square people, kids adopt lower-class identifications -- weird hair arrangements, tattoos, rings in the nose, baggy and torn clothing, cigarettes, beer, dirty jokes, filthy language, insults to adults, taunts of peer achievers, drugs.

Young people tolerate – some even emulate – low- class behavior. However, most move on to become good citizens and parents. The low class that stays low class is a tragedy for them and the nation.

Sociologist/historian Alan Toynbee warned us a century ago that civilizations collapse when the elites begin to imitate those at the bottom of society. We are already halfway there.

Friend Mel is on the right track when he instinctively feels that schools have not done all they could, or should, in turning natural-born monsters into responsible citizens.

Liberals are paranoid about “separation of church and state” which is nowhere in the Constitution. No matter. Morality and civility are their own rewards. Heaven can wait.

Schools should – must – teach manners, maturity and marriage along with reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic.

Parents should – must -- demand that sex and violence be banned totally from television as being culturally destructive.

Television can be held to decency standards through the power of broadcast-frequencies owned by the federal government, or by cable-privileges on municipally owned rights-of-way. Raunchy and violent exhibitions could continue in privately owned theaters, auditoriums and museums that charge for individual admission.

Lee Loevinger, chairman of the FCC in 1966, recognized the special place TV was achieving in our lives: “Television is the literature of the illiterate, the culture of the lowbrow, the wealth of the poor, the privilege of the underprivileged, the exclusive club of the excluded masses.”

Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Television is a potent medium having responsibilities and protections because of its commanding impact on public comity. It is here to stay, but not to rule or destroy. Our Founding fathers couldn’t even dream of such a fantastic and powerful influence on our lives.

Therefore, the time has come for citizenry today to bend television to the rigor of checks and balances like those political institutions already so circumscribed.

Williams – culture

Sunday – Mar. 11, 2001

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