Chad’s points are well taken, and I think right on target — both on the likely source of American cruelty in a few incidents in Iraq, and on the double standard of the liberal response.
Christians and other “values voters” have been castigated for years as narrow-minded bluenoses when they criticize the content of “entertainment”, but you don’t have to have a theistic worldview at all to see the impact of the visual culture on society. Furthermore, the desensitization it has caused doesn’t have to result in sensational copycat crimes for it to have a general coarsening and de-humanizing effect on our lives.
I was a student at a secular state college — and a military officer in training — when my classwork and extracurricular schedule used up any time I’d formerly spent watching TV. For about a semester and a half I saw nearly zero television and no movies; then one evening on the way to the laundry room, I passed the TV lounge and saw a couple of minutes of Miami Vice, the hot new show of the moment.? In about ninety seconds I was treated to hostility, abuse, threats, and a gangland execution of a bound victim by automatic weapon fire; and it startled me to recognize this was supposed to be amusing in some way — that’s what entertainment is for.
What really bothered me,?is that I saw for the first time how callused I had become to the violence, suffering, and other ills which were standard fare on TV. I grew up watching police dramas and war movies, and by?then they had ceased to register on my conscience. I had had to be away from it for a while before I even noticed again.
We cancelled our cable subscription in 1993 and have raised our children with very minimal television since then; and I’ve got to say, so far they seem much kinder and less prone to nightmares than either of us were at their age. And we’ve saved about $4680 cable bills, too. Good things, both.
