The type of damage caused by media violence

Media Education Foundation has released a new video: The Mean World. This documentary studies the work of communications scholar George Gerbner, who carefully studied media violence for four decades. What is the effect of media violence? It doesn't seem to make most of those who watch it engage in violent acts. Rather, viewing repeated acts of violence is "likely to make us more scared of violence being done to us." Gerbner's team repeatedly determined that "commercial media have eclipsed religion, art, oral traditions, and the family as the great story-telling engine of our time." As Gerbner noted, a small handful of commercial conglomerates have global marketing formula that are imposed on the people in Hollywood [who are told] put in more action. Cut out complicated solutions. Apply this formula because it travels well in the global market. These are formulas that need no translation, that are image-driven, that speak action in any language . . . and the leading element of this formula is violence." This tidal wave of highly choreographed violence is unprecedented, and it is being pumped into every home. Most children now see 8,000 murders by the end of elementary school. Gerber holds that this violence is so dangerous because it has become routine.

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The Politics of War Crimes

I sometimes can't shake the feeling that everything is wrong. Down is up, wrong is right, war is peace, and lies are truth. Take, for example, the issue of torture. We as a society have regressed to the point where we find it acceptable to use torture. We use it explicitly, openly, without any concern for the consequences. Of course, some of the consequences (like increasing terrorism) are inevitable, whether we choose to be concerned with them or not. But that's really beside the point-- the simple point that I am amazed by right now is that we torture people. That, and the fact that it's not a major controversy. The Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave, with tyranny and torture for all. Since the usual arguments against our torture policy have proven ineffective, I want to elaborate a bit. The usual arguments involve questions of efficacy-- that is, whether torture is effective or not. (It's not). In fact, the CIA officer who argued that waterboarding was so effective that it cracked hardcore terrorists the first time (and within 30 seconds!) has now recanted his story. When he came out with the story of how waterboarding worked so well, he was called the "Man of the Hour", but now hardly anyone is mentioning that it was all lies. Go figure that a CIA guy would lie to his own countrymen, right? In any case, the issue of waterboarding, or any of the various "enhanced interrogation techniques", is a red herring. The truth is that we are engaged in far worse abuses.

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NASCAR Patches for Congressmen

I heard one new idea in last night's State of the Union. In response to the Supreme Court deciding that multi-national corporations should have all the rights of individual breathing citizens -- allowing them to spend whatever they want to influence elections (as reported here) -- Obama suggested that all contacts between lobbyists and public servants be publicly documented. This includes the identity of the client corporations and amounts of money and time involved. The applause were uneven. This morning a new FaceBook group appeared: 'Our Corporate Congress': Make NASCAR-type patches mandatory Congress-wear. I'm not much of a joiner, but I like this idea. Allow the Congressman from Exxon to proudly wear the oil patch right next to his Monsanto and Pfizer badges. Let the senator who filibusters public transit bills proudly show his AAA patch and Ford logo.

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