From an unscientific sampling of daily experience and media hype, I conclude that we are teaching our children to hate with alarming efficiency. We do so through a typically American way of dealing with whatever we define as unpleasant by omitting any reference to it.

Ours is a sin of omission, not commission. We never censor. We just ignore. Oh sure, like comically grotesque pundits in a Fellini movie we yak ourselves into a coma on talk television about violence in the media, but we never really stop watching it. If we took the profits out of violence and incivility, producers would move onto other topics. I read in a film magazine recently that directors were moving into “vomit scenes” since everything else has been done.

From whence our love affair with violence? Perhaps our own heritage reveals one plausible answer: We are a nation born of violence. Our Manifest Destiny and growth from coast to coast rested on the slaughter of indigenous peoples. Our first settlers were the “victims” of “oppression.” If adults who were abused as children repeat that abuse with their own children, then is it a stretch to think that our ancestors, like today’s adults carrying on the legacy of abuse, took up their mantle against American Indians in much the same way?

And the beat goes on. And in the process, we are teaching our children to hate.

After watching surreal scenes from Columbine High on the television screen,
I read in the Wall Street Journal that The Limited store instructs legions of frontline sales trainees that “We are at WAR.” WAR is the acronym for Winning at Retail. Interspersed with rallying cries from executives, managers show employees a training video, mingled with scenes from blockbuster movies like Top Gun and G.I. Jane.

In one scene, a soldier drags a wounded comrade to safety, followed by Leslie Wexner, Limited’s founder and CEO, who declares that “It is war, and in wars people really do live and people do die.” Grim-faced and striking what reporter Rebecca Quick calls “a deliberate note of alarm,” Wexner says “We will win together or we will lose together.” Retail is war. While cable surfing, I noticed the words “Raw is War” stretched around the ring of a professional wrestling match. Sports are war.

At the gym, I had a difficult time keeping pace on the treadmill while listening to lyrics like “Bullet in the head” … “Take back our rights” sung by white, young males with screeching, anguished voices of despair. Music is war.

Within a few days, the KKK would be holding a rally in this students hometown of Lebanon. Press reports indicate that both sides — pro-and anti-Klan — got what they wanted. Attention. Race relations remain war in this country.

Not even Congress is exempt from our declining civil and civic debate. They’ve met twice now in Hershey in order to create a more perfect union. Recently, 200 people met in Hershey to discuss school violence. Within days of the Colorado incident, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency tolled 40 calls regarding problems at school districts across the state. School is war.

So, in the vernacular: What’s up with all this violence?

How about a basic disconnect, an ocean of denial of the overall effect a continuous flood of violent images has on our children. We just don’t want to hear it. We just don’t want to deal with it. We won’t not buy tickets to the next violent media venue.

Is it rational to think that 3,000 studies conducted before 1971 suggest a strong connection between television watching and aggression? Is it rational to deny that if retail is war, if sports are war, if music is war, and even Congress must take a break from shouting to restore civility that all of this bashing has no effect on children?

Again in the vernacular: I don’t think so.

Think about something for a moment. Hollywood made propaganda films used during World War II to assist soldiers in overcoming their otherwise human instinct not to kill. We know those films worked then. Why are we reluctant to admit that the daily avalanche of violent images on television and in the movies have no effect on children’s behavior?

Ah, I anticipate a potential objection. I’m wrong because only a few of television’s millions of viewers snap into rages of conspiratorial terror. But now let’s ask the same question another way: Even though so few are affected, why do the remaining millions spend so much time watching so much violence?

To object on the grounds that since so few viewers turn to violence is an example of what I call putting the em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-ABULL. For example, a friend of mine is quick to deflect my dislike for the Don Imus Show on the grounds that he is an “equal opportunity offender,” i.e. women, blacks, gays, lesbians, anyone at any moment of airtime may bear the brunt of his narcissistic crankiness.

I ask, “So because he offends everyone that makes it okay?” Why do we tolerate him offending anyone? By allowing a continuous continuous flow of messages that clearly underscore a disregard for human life, decency, and simply being nice to others — whether they are the same or different from us — teaches our children to hate. It teaches them to hate by rote. The formula is quite simple. You dis me — BAM. You’re not like me — SLAP. I’m cool; you’re not — GET-OUTA-MY-FACE. Sounds like a highly efficient way to teach violence.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?