KILL THE VIOLENCE THAT'S KILLING US

Into our homes comes an x-rated world.
               
Television, phone, mail, and the Internet bring the stink of everything that's shocking into our private rooms like smoke. We're breathing it, tasting it, hooked on it. Every day without fail, we are exposed to murders, violence, robbery, and prurient behavior.

In the eighties, Tipper Gore (Al Gore's ex-wife ), worked tirelessly to get warning labels for records marketed to children, and published a book, "Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society," in which she speaks rationally about the sexually explicit and violent lyrics in rock music and videos. Though Tipper promoted awareness and labeling, not censoring or banning, her efforts didn't produce legislation. You and I know that today pop songs, movies, TV award shows and specials -- as well as books and comics -- are more than ever jam-packed with violence and sex.

How dare we hope that our children are okay? The rhythms and alliterative rhymes, like favorite foods, are swallowed, digested, absorbed -- become  part of their minds and hearts.

What am I shouting about?  Surely you hear it, feel it, and see that our children are being abused by the many things in today's world that we support -- yes -- Support -- by WATCHING entertainment that advertisers create to sell their product.

Boycott the violent shows that we're hooked on?

Sure! You could join some anti violence group. You could write your congressperson. You could sign a petition if there's a petition.

Golly, there are so many things that desperately, urgently need to be protested. The only immediate way you and I can stop the violence that's deeply part of our daily life is to NOT PARTICIPATE as audience.

Am I saying DON'T watch TV?  DON'T see the blockbuster kill films? Go cold turkey?

YEP.

It's a tiny gesture. But if enough of us do that, it'll be felt by the advertisers, who affect the creators, who succeed, who make money, by imagining and inventing and selling evermore horrifying, shocking violence.

Yes, it's just a drop in the bucket, but one drop, another, and another gets to be a bucketful, another, and another.