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The Violence Virus


Published 15 April 2002




Microsoft's billionaire competitors took the wrong track.  When they couldn't out-compete MS they unleashed their paid congressdogs on the justice department who set the hounds of antitrust to gnaw upon the Gates gang.  And now it looks like the Redmond crowd may wiggle out of that as well.  What they should have done was sic the Center for Disease Control on them.



That's right.  Sun, Netscape, Oracle, et. al. should have had their senatordogs lavish taxpayer plunder on the professional research industry.  Studies would have proved (or they wouldn't have been funded) that using Microsoft products causes medical distress.  High blood pressure, hypertension, ulcers, stress, headache, uncontrollable cursing.  Using the disease model, class action lawyerdogs could have quickly, and profitably, sanitized the deep pockets of pestilence  Look how well it worked with the anti-tobacco wolf pack.



Of course, the gun-haters haven't been doing so well with the public health ploy.  Most judges aren't convinced that gun makers are guilty of spreading the gunpox plague.  But that hasn't stopped others from trying.  If you think the contagion of obesity is the coming public health crisis, think again.  It's already here.



A Libertarian Party press release has taken the pulse of the opening hypodermic shots in the obesity epidemic.  A California state asseemblydog wants a tax on junk food.  Another wants to tax soda.  A Connecticut bill would repeal a sales tax exemption for sweets sold to college cafeterias, senior centers and day care centers.  A bill in Maryland would fine restaurants that peddle soft drinks unless they also offer sugar-free thirst-quenchers.



But even as politicaldogs are playing doctor with our food, prescribing billion dollar transfusions from our pockets into theirs as the cure, the first trial balloon to transform yet another personal responsibility issue into yet another public health feeding frenzy has been sent aloft.



A Christian Science Monitor story makes it an established fact, proven by more than 1,000 studies, that TV violence causes real life violence.  The toe-in-the-water test for metastasizing personal morality into a national health crusade appears early in the article when the violence debate is compared to the early stages of the anti-tobacco campaign.  And what was the anti-tobacco campaign based on?  That puffing, chewing and dipping is a disease spread by malignant corporations and their advertisers.  Cigarettes cause smoking.



Culturedogs of all breeds have long panted after the power to dictate what we can watch, hear and read, to little avail.  A chronic condition known as the First Amendment has kept them on a short leash.  But a herd of major pediatric, psychiatric, and medical groups that suggests some sort of connection between fictional TV carnage and real world bloodletting is setting up a medical tactic end run around the pesky Bill of Rights and giving entertainment biz regulators hope.



Ever the whimpering curs, entertainment spokesdogs fail to challenge the television-tube-as-violence-virus concept and merely whine that there's been a 29 percent drop in TV violence compared with the 98-99 season.  Which only leaves them open to the charge (diagnosis?) that whoever watched all that televised mayhem in order to come up with the 29 percent figure must be the most violent people on earth.



Even while acknowledging that they might have cause and effect inverted (does TV violence cause people to be violent or do already violent people just like to watch violent TV?) the article tests the political-medical waters to ankle depth by claiming that the scientific community (re: the professional taxpayer-funded grant grabbing research industry) is casting the issue as one of public health, not taste.



Why don't the medical researchdogs study people who smoked all their lives but didn't contract cancer, emphysema, or heart disease?  Why don't they study people like my wife who gobbles high caloric food but still can't push her weight much above 100 pounds?  Why don't they study people who watch a lifetime of violent TV but never commit violent acts?  Isn't it worthwhile to study disease-resistant people for clues that may help prevent the same disease in others?  No.  Because these are not real diseases and because such studies will not promote the powerdogs' agenda.



In the Monitor article, the oft-quoted Dr. Brody of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says of TV violence,  It's not the sole cause, but even if it represents 10 percent of the reason, somebody should look at this.  Translation: keep the taxpayer-funded research loot rolling in.



When do they start the 1,000 studies on the addiction of power drunkenness?




- by Garry Reed

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