What We Say, Play, Hear, Do and Think Does Matter

One of the few photos that show my playmates from childhood is this one, taken about when I was in second grade. I'm the one kneeling on the left. Gail is the other girl, on the right. She lived next door and was 2 or three years older than me. Danny (standing) lived on the other side and was about two years younger. Danny died of Hodgkin's lymphoma the fall when he was in the second grade, and I was in the fourth, so I know this was taken a year or two earlier. We had been playing cowboys and Indians, and either Gail's mom or another neighbor took our picture. We were some tough hombres in those days with our cap pistols locked, loaded, and raised for action.

I started thinking about this picture this evening, after watching NBC Dateline's hour-long coverage of the tragic shootings in Arizona, so I found it in an old album and scanned it. Right now one of the big debates is about how much influence the sometimes violent rhetoric of politics might have had on the shooter. A lot of people, some of my family and friends included, discount the effect of violence in song lyrics, movies, video games, and television shows on how unbalanced people decide to act out. So it's not surprising that already the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Congresswoman Giffords' opponent in the 2010 election who campaigned by inviting his supporters to fire an automatic weapon with him have all said that nothing they have said or done could possibly be responsible for the actions of the young man alleged to have committed this crime. After all, he appears to have a history of mental instability, so that's it.

I respectfully disagree. The three of us, me, Gail and Danny, were by all outward signs quite normal kids. We played with our cap guns and water pistols, and in my household at least, my father had a .38 revolver hidden in the top drawer of the dresser in the bedroom (I wasn't supposed to know it was there) as well as, later in life, my grandfather's .22 squirrel rifle and a couple of other long guns. So I am not one of those people who was never around guns but is now leery of them. When I was a teenager I shot a .22 at a Boy Scout/Girl scout skeet shoot and I scored better than all but one of the guys . (I was a good shot at archery, too!) But I think things are different today. For one thing, kids aren't outside on a December day playing any kind of game; they are inside watching television, surfing the Internet or playing a video game--or possibly doing all three at once.

When we three Tulsa kids were playing cowboy, all we had as imagery were a few movies like the Westerns my grandmother like to take me to, and some radio shows like The Lone Ranger or Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers as role models. Our home didn't get TV until I was 13. We didn't actually see any blood, and we could get up after we "died" and play another day, just as the actors in the movies seemed to survive and show up in more movies, so they (and we) were immortal. We also had other things to do...like home chores and school work (yes, I had subtraction homework in the second grade!) and music lessons and Brownie Scouts. Yet, we were very capable of fantasizing ourselves into the roles we were playing. I don't have a stack of studies right here at hand to point to, just my own experience. Remember the girls who wanted to look like Barbie when they grew up, and how a few of them were willing to starve or binge and purge in order to get that figure? Remember watching Flashdance and dancing in your living room? Remember watching Esther Williams and imagining yourself a synchronized swimmer? Media of all kinds have always had an effect on the dreams and fantasies of those who watch and listen. Why then do we think that the roles our kids and young people watch today--many of them soaked and saturated with sex and violence--are not going to have any effect at all on their behavior, if only for a while?

When angry constituents took over Congressional town hall meetings in 2009, something began to snap in public life. Candidates received death threats in 2010, and so did sitting members of Congress after they voted on legislation that some people didn't like. Outbursts in classrooms are common now, sometimes from people who are disturbed and sometimes just onery. If a member of Congress can yell "liar" at the President, then why not them?

Yes, we have had violence before--I was a junior in college when JFK was assassinated, and it remains one of the defining moments of my life. I was teaching at a college in Kansas when MLK was assassinated, and remember walking arm and arm down the town's main street with other grieving people of all races, singing "we shall overcome" for two miles while men with rifles stood on rooftops ready to shoot any of us who got "out of line." So this is just the latest chapter, not the beginning, of a sad drama in American life. Like many others, I wonder how the story will end.

I am reminded that one of the rallying cries of the American Revolution was Patrick Henry's "give me liberty, or give me death." Today we hear folks saying in effect, "give me what I want, or it will be your death." And we see people claiming to be a church getting free air time holding up signs rejoicing in the deaths of not only our brave soldiers, but now, the victims this weekend in Arizona.

This is sick. We have gone from using guns for legitimate self defense, Congressionally sanctioned war (as in WW II, in which my father and two of my uncles served), or providing the famiy with food--as my grandfather did when he was between jobs and as my father did as a 12-year-old hunting rabbits for his mother to cook during a time when his father was stranded in town by a blizzard and the rest of the family was out there on the farm--we have gone from these uses to guns and explosives as entertainment. Today I saw at least 3 trailers for upcoming TV series or movies that were full of bullets, blasts, boobs, butts and blood. How can we say that any emotionally or mentally unstable person is going to watch this stuff and not be influenced in some way? Or watch the internet video that made the rounds in early 2010, that showed the Democratic leaders of Congress (Reid, Pelosi, et al) as well as a generic "Liberals" in the crosshairs of a gunsight, and not get the fact that this was meant to be a symbolic target, not a real one? If only one in a million people acts on impulse after watching, listening to, and reading such stuff, is that not one in a million too many?

Anytime there is a tragedy like this, most of us are moved, but don't feel much of a connection with those affected. Sometimes the 6 degrees of separation is much less. My husband learned tonight that the mother of Congresswoman Giffords is one of his high school classmates. We are connected, whether we know it, or not.

Eventually our little Tulsa gang broke up. Gail moved away, Danny died, and I spent more time on roller skates. Then I got interested in astronomy and bird watching, grew up and went to high school and college. But long before we stopped playing, I had put away my cap pistol. I preferred to be the Indian, and I spent many afternoons tied to the clothesline post after being captured. But secretly, I dreamed of reversing the plot of all those old technicolor movies, of being a wise Indian chief and leading my people far away from the conflict, to greener pastures, away from the men with the guns. Of saving my people. I guess I am still dreaming of that role...what can I say, what can I do, to help save my people from this madness of disrespect, frustration, mayhem and self destruction?