What actually causes violent children? The news media!

I came about this thought a strange way tonight.  I was browsing the news on the web, and I came across this video clip from CNN. 

While this may seem unrelated to what I am about to talk about, it really fired me up.  Regardless of what you think of the subject matter, the method of "reporting" is so fucking awful!  The story is about a proposed law to penalize the third parties in adulterous relationships when a marriage breaks up.  OK, interesting subject...BUT.  The "reporter;" instead of bringing in two legal experts from each angle to talk about the subject, takes the pro side, and brings in the webmaster of a site that allows married people to hook up in adulterous rendezvous to defend the other side.  WTF?  How is this journalism? 

The "reporter" (note that "Prime News" is described as being a show "delivers the stories and information that impact your life;" not an opinion or talk show), is obviously overacting to draw you in, and they pick not a legal expert, but a webmaster who financially benefits from adultery to defend against the need for the law...again...WTF?

So...now to totally change subject.  I was sitting there, aghast at this utter crap and how we put up with it, and I started thinking.  Every time a teenager (or lately, a young adult), shoots up his school, the news media and their resident slimy talking heads come out swinging at two of my favorite pastimes:  Guns...and Video Games (and in the past; violent movies/TV and rap music, although this is SOOO five years ago now).

Now of course the guns argument is always fun.  If there were no guns, the argument goes there would be no school shootings (although the bombing plots would continue).  The media never seems to mention Switzerland, where every household with a male between the ages of 20 and 42 is required to have a fully or semi-automatic rifle; and has a murder rate that is around 13% that of the US.

Next comes video games.  Everyone who watches the news (and doesn't think for themselves) knows that video games causes kids to be violent. Yet in South Korea, where violent video games are possibly even more ingrained in the popular culture than in the US, there is less school violence (although, probably more MMO starvings).

So what is the straw that breaks the camel's back?  I posit that it is the news media in this country.  A news media that agonizes over every detail of some doped out worthless celebrity; epitomizes the lack of self-responsibility by promoting a war and then capitalizing on the results of their drum-beating by about-facing and attacking the politicians who drove for it (and drove up their ratings); and of course, by making celebs of these psychos who choose to go out and shoot up schools. 

They have to know that by publishing the intimate details of these sociopaths that they are providing EXACTLY the kind of exposure these sickos want.  They HAVE to know that by splashing the pictures of these violent people on every website and newspaper around that it will encourage the next imbalanced loner to get the same kind of fame that the current one has.  But do they stop?  No.  Why?  BECAUSE WE KEEP WATCHING.

Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc, etc.  These people are poisoning our youth.

Now, I'm really into that whole Constitution thingy (and all those pesky amendments that so many people tend to forget when they want to ban guns, secretly wiretap, shut down "seditious" speech, or hold people without charging them...oh and I don't count the tenth one, since that one is dead and no one seems to care).  So...am I calling for a ban on these scumbags?  Nope.  I just wish people would act.

Turn them off. 

Go to the range.  Play a video game.  Read a book (preferably George Orwell, John Ross, or Smedly Butler). 

But most of all...think for yourself. 

[/rant]