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3/19/2013

Why the NRA is Right about Hollywood

Via-American Thinker



By Selwyn Duke

Upstate New York's Catskill Mountain Range is a bucolic place near and dear to my heart. It's where storybook character Rip Van Winkle enjoyed his legendary slumber, and its scenery hasn't changed much since he was born of Washington Irving's fertile imagination. Yet, like Van Winkle, if I'd fallen asleep for 20 years when first arriving in that verdant heaven, I, too, would have noticed some profound changes upon awakening.

About two decades ago, many rural Catskill teens - sons of farmers and hunters and fishermen - suddenly started donning baggy pants and reflecting "gangsta'" counter-culture despite living nowhere near any large urban center. The following generation of teens experienced today's recent cultural evolution and often sport multiple tattoos and body piercings despite living nowhere near NYC's grungy East Village. Yet I'm wrong in a sense: those places were actually very close - a television set away.

My old hinterland haunt was once place where, if you wiggled the rabbit-ear antenna just right, you could pull in one or two TV stations. And what could you see? Perhaps reruns of The Brady Bunch, perhaps the news. But about a quarter century ago came VCRs and video stores; then cable and satellite TV; and, finally, the Internet. The serpent had entered Eden.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, much fire has been directed at gun advocates in general and the National Rifle Association in particular. In response, the organization has implicated Hollywood and popular culture in general for mainstreaming mindless violence. Yet even many Second Amendment advocates part company with the NRA on this point. After all, blaming entertainment for crime smacks of blaming guns. Yet there's quite a profound difference: guns don't transmit values. But how we use guns - and knives, fists and words - on screen certainly does.


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2 comments:

  1. I love this quote attributable to Ben or not!

    Ben Franklin - 2nd Amendment
    "Democracy... Is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty... Is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." This is why every individual has the right to defend himself, as recognized in the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights

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  2. You can attribute the conditioned response ingrained into the individual via video games and hollywood.
    But you can only blame lack of parental guidance in the face of such humanity numbing onslaughts.(and the horrific results)

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