Death imitates art

They grieve today in Springfield. Just as they’ve grieved in Jonesboro, in West Paducah, in Pearl and in the seven other scenes of schoolhouse massacres in the last five years.

It’s in the copycat stage now, but this isn’t just a matter of one disturbed kid following another off the cliff. America’s children are being pushed over the edge by an entertainment industry — movies, TV, video games — that glamorizes violence without remorse or repercussions.

Last month, as the nation reeled from Jonesboro, the National Television Violence Study, a three-year project of the universities of California, Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, was published and widely ignored. The researchers found that the amount of violence on TV, despite growing public concern, is increasing — 61 percent of programs contain violent content and it’s seeping from adult-oriented late night into prime time, when kids are watching.

The study did not just quantify violence, it assessed the quality as well. It found that nearly three-fourths of televised violence is sanitized. No sorrow, no criticism, no penalty. “Bad” characters go unpunished in 40 percent of programs. Nearly half of violent incidents are initiated by “good guys” who portray bloodshed as desirable, necessary and painless. Only 4 percent of shows that contain violence employ an anti-violence theme. Other research has noted the same trend in movies. Today’s top-selling video games are played through a gunsight.

Federal and state governments have nailed Big Tobacco’s hide to the wall with internal documents showing the industry knew its product was harmful and intentionally marketed toward the young. Now they are going after Microsoft and any success in proving Big Software stifled competition will be through internal documents.

What would these watchdogs of the public good would find in Big Entertainment’s file cabinets, what market studies, what strategies? An industry based upon the premise that minds can be molded through advertising would have a hard time defending itself. But that won’t happen until the someone in the Justice Department or a state attorney general finds the courage to take on those who buy videotape by the truckload.

Yes, there is a free-speech question here, but Big Entertainment has gone beyond shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. It has struck the match.

That the nation has turned over its child-rearing to an electronic nanny is unfortunate. That this nanny is a sociopath who goes unchecked is unconscionable.