VIOLENT MEDIA!!!

After the Virginia Tech shootings, the media violence debate reared its ugly head again.

The other night, after I had already taken sleeping pills and was drifting to sleep while watching Tavis Smiley (Yes…I watch Tavis Smiley… and Charlie Rose) and the interview sparked my interest and overrode the power of melatonin on my brain.

During this particular episode, Tavis was interviewing former U.S. Attorney, Bud Cummings, who was recently forced to resign, and before they even talked about the legal or ethical issues surrounding the forced resignation, Tavis asked the Attorney what his thoughts were concerning the VT shooting…here is what he said…

Bud Cummings (emphasis added):

“School shootings are a modern phenomenon. And Tavis, it's traceable, really, to only one aspect of our society and it's not poverty and it's not racism and it's not too many guns on the street.

There's been guns in our communities for hundreds of years. It's the culture and it's the increase in violence that the children and all of us are exposed to in televisions, movies, and video games. And in some people - especially people like this young man, who may have been on the edge, that may be just enough to take them over the edge, and it actually transforms them physiologically - the way they process information in their brains. So it's something that we really need to look at.”

WHAT!? I don’t buy that are society is more violent than it was 1,000, 100, or 30 years ago. Read the Bible, watch The Mod Squad, or watch the nightly news and you’ll get plenty of violence throughout time and in “informative” forms of media.

I won’t even get into the statement- “Transforms them physiologically.” Tavis just nodded and let Cummings continue…

“Parents know to not expose their children, for instance, to pornography. We all kind of know on some level that that's bad for kids and we should keep that away from our children, but we don't all seem to make that same recognition about the effect that this rampant violence that's depicted in the media has on children and all of us.

And we need to talk about that, and there's a lot of money behind it, and there's gonna be a lot of push and pull. We have the First Amendment, and that's important, but it's an issue that needs to be debated, and this incident may be one example why that debate should take place now.”

….I wonder what Charlie Rose would have said in response?