Recently, the Federal Trade Commission released a report saying that the film, music, television, and video game industries have been marketing adult-oriented material towards children. Let me add to this by saying, “Duh!”. This has been going on for years. When I was 11, a movie came out called “Friday the 13th”. It was rated R, and I was much too young at the time. Did that stop me from wanting to go see it? Um…..NO!!!!! What did stop me was a responsible mother who realized I was too young to witness such violence. Not to mention the fact, looking back, I really didn’t miss much outside of seeing Kevin Bacon get slaughtered, but I digress. I found an article (dead link) on MSNBC.com that had Al Gore’s reaction to the FTC findings…
Gore said Monday if the entertainment industry did not halt such practices, he would support unspecified measures to hold it accountable. “A lot of it has to be done privately,” Gore said in an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television talk show. “It’s not about censorship; it’s about citizenship, including corporate citizenship.” Referring to his wife’s involvement in the 1980s in a campaign to urge the recording industry to voluntarily label obscene and violent lyrics, Gore said, “Tipper started 20 years ago educating me about why parents need more help, and she was successful in convincing the recording industry to give warnings to parents when material is inappropriate,” Gore said. “Now Joe Lieberman and I are following up on that to try to persuade all the companies in that industry to abide by what they said they would do.”
Ok, let’s break this down, shall we…
1. He’s on Oprah. We know how great a fair and even-handed political forum the Oprah Show is.
2. This is coming from the man who has accepted more campaign funds from the Hollywood industry than any presidential candidate ever.
3. He dug up the ghosts of the PMRC. The ill-fated pet project of Tipper Gore. She cried for ratings, she got a sticker.
4. So either this man is dead serious about censorship or he’s a hypocrite. Either way, that makes him dangerous.
Bottom line: All corporations are soulless money-making machines out for a fast buck. Of course, they are marketing towards your children. Children want most what they can’t have. It’s yours and my job as parents and step-parents to protect our children, not the government. And if you feel it is the government’s job to help raise your children, than you shouldn’t have had kids in the first place.
So my friends at The Washington Post are at it again. No, it’s not about me this time, but you’ll see the connection if you’ve been reading this site. (Yeah, right.)
I read an article run in the daily newspaper that was run in the Post on 8/12/2000. The article was an opinion piece about how video game manufacturers are marketing their merchandising for M rated video games towards pre-schoolers. Now I thought it was just another article saying that the government should be the watchers of our children and not the parents until I saw this quote concerning ratings…
“More concretely, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a Uniform Ratings Bill and are planning to hold hearings on it after the FTC report comes out. This bill would mandate an end to the current hodgepodge of rating systems and require that Hollywood, the video game industry, and music industry work together to create a single rating system. If the industries fail to come up with such a system, the FTC would be authorized to establish one.”
Notice a familiar name in there? That’s right kiddies. Our fair senator from Connecticut is not only concerned about pro-wrestling, but he seems to be meddling in the affairs of one of my other loves, video games.
Again, I say it is the parents’ responsibility to know what games your children are playing. Just like you should know what TV shows they’re watching. No excuses. And don’t give me any crap about how you’re too busy. You should always have time for your kids.
(A year after Columbine I wrote this as my reaction to being improperly associated with the gunmen. You have to keep in mind I was suffering deeply from depression at the time. I now realize that the problems I went through at the time were mostly my fault.)
I thought I’d open my first rant with a personal story about what happened to me after Columbine. But first click here to read the Washington Post article where my site was mentioned.
Are you back? Ok. Good. After that article was printed, I e-mailed the reporter letting him know that I didn’t appreciate being connected to such a senseless and tragic event. Also, I didn’t appreciate one of my works being taken out of context. As an aside, “Death Of A Jester” was written about me becoming more serious in my professional life instead of trying to be funny all the time. Instead of receiving an apology, I received this:
“Thanks very much for your note. I’d be most appreciative if you could call me at 202 XXX XXXX to discuss your site and the meaning of the Trenchcoat.”
My reply was to him a polite thanks, but you’ve ruined my life enough. Suffice to say I never called. An apology was never given, a retraction never printed.
I’ve been told that other media outlets also mentioned my site. Such as CNN, ABC, the BBC, etc. But the reason I always single out The Post is that it’s the only one I have concrete proof of my writing being used without my permission.
Now, The Post was the newspaper that broke the Watergate scandal back in the 70s and caused the downfall of a president. Fast-forward 25 years, and their investigative skills consist of paraphrasing an internet “poet” to make good copy. If Woodward and Bernstein were dead, they’d be rolling in their graves. Also, notice he didn’t quote any of my writings about love or dreams. That wouldn’t have been a “story”.
After receiving the death threats and having my friends threatened, I kind of had other things on my mind. It affected me at my job. I ended up losing a major account for the company I worked for. My blunder cost the company thousands. Needless to say, I was no longer employed after that. Then I couldn’t find a job. Then my car was repossessed. Then I was evicted. I was about to go live on the streets, but luckily, my family was willing to take me in, but they lived 642 miles away. Which meant leaving my girlfriend behind. That was 8 months ago. Strangely enough, we’re still together.
Anyway, Mr. Reporter, you want to know the meaning of TheTrenchcoat, well, here it is. As I’ve mentioned several times, growing up, all my heroes wore trench coats. When I finally got one of my own at 17, it felt great. To me, it was like wearing a cape, like I was Batman. It gave me confidence, women started noticing me more, and it looks damn cool. That’s it. That’s the big answer you were looking for. Thanks again for ruining my life.
The point? There is none. This is just something I had to get off my chest. If there is any point, it’s probably, don’t believe everything you read…especially in The Post.
(This was the Washington Post Article from the day after Columbine that got me started on my strange journey.)
Gunmen Recalled as Outcasts
By Marc Fisher Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 21, 1999; Page A1
The shooters who turned Columbine High School into an unspeakable landscape of carnage yesterday were members of a small clique of outcasts who always wore black trench coats and spent their entire adolescence deep inside the morose subculture of Gothic fantasy, their fellow students said.
Students at the Colorado school said the gunmen, whom police say may have turned their weapons on themselves after killing as many as 25 of their schoolmates and teachers, were a constant target of derision for at least four years.
“They’re basically outcasts, Gothic people,” said Peter Maher, a junior who had a confrontation last July 4 with the shooters and several of their fellow members of the “Trench Coat Mafia,” the black-clad teenagers’ name for their clique. “They’re into anarchy. They’re white supremacists and they’re into Nostradamus stuff and Doomsday.”
Several students said the shooters ? whose names were withheld by police but who are believed to have graduated from Columbine last year ? were deeply into death ? talking, reading and dreaming about it.
Black trench coats are a consistent theme in the Gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality.
Inspired by fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Gothic has become a fascination of many American high schoolers, some of whom simply dress and paint their fingernails black while others immerse themselves in a pseudo-medieval world of dark images.
On Web sites featuring poetry called “The Written Work of the Trenchcoat” and in political tracts and other elements of the conspiratorial imagination, trench coats serve as a symbol for things from Hitler and the Nazis to mass murder to suicidal fantasies. Yesterday was Hitler’s birthday, an occasion for demonstrations, mock funerals and other macabre commemorations among both neo-Nazis and parts of the Gothic scene.
When the young men started shooting yesterday, tenth-grader Mindy Pollock was in the school parking lot. She saw two shooters firing their guns repeatedly, and she watched as her fellow students dropped to the pavement.
She said she couldn’t believe it was real, especially since she had once before seen this same boy pull a gun on some of her friends. “The one with the handgun today pulled a shotgun on my friends once. He said he was sick of being made fun of,” she said. “He said, ‘I’ll shoot you, I’ll shoot you.’” Pollock said her friends tried to calm the boy and then ran from him.
Maher and two of his friends were at a fireworks stand in Littleton July 4 when the Trench Coat Mafia boys approached them and said they had a shotgun. Maher and his friends saw no gun, but the trench coat boys did pull knives and tried to fight with the others. Maher said he and his friends had had no previous contact with the boys in black.
“We didn’t want to fight, so we talked to them for a while and then we just got out of there,” Maher said.
Several students described the Trench Coat Mafia members in similar terms: They wore their trench coats every day, no matter the weather, even in class. Under the coats, they dressed in black from head to toe ? military berets, T-shirts, jeans, combat boots. Red shoelaces and the occasional Confederate flag patch were the only departure from the dark theme.
“They were kind of the freaks of the school,” said Kendra Curry, a senior.
Pollock and other students described the Trench Coat Mafia as a group of perhaps six to ten students who were constantly being ribbed by the school’s athletes and other, more popular cliques.
“The athletes and stuff are really popular,” Pollock said. “They make fun of me all the time because I wear bell-bottoms and I’m a little hippy girl. And they’d make fun of the Trench Coat Mafia. They’d say, ‘White trash,’ and ‘Why don’t you comb your hair?’ and ‘Are you Gothic, man?’ and ‘You need some new clothes.’ Just stupid teenage stuff.”
Maher, too, said athletes at Columbine routinely teased the trench-coated students, muttering “Goth” every time they passed one another in the hallways.
Students said the Gothic look appeals only to a tiny minority of young people in the Denver suburb. “They kind of stay by themselves,” said junior Evan Vitale. “They always have the neo-Nazi look, so we were talking about them and Hitler’s birthday even before the shooting started. Everybody knew it was Hitler’s birthday.”
On one such Web site, a skeleton dances over a raging inferno and the words “The Trenchcoat.” Below, a poem called “Death of a Jester” includes these lines:
“There will be no performance today/There will be no curtain call/He can no longer perform for you/So witness the grandest spectacle of all/It’s a one night engagement/So make your way to the front row/It’s the death of a jester/It’s one dead man’s show.
“There are no mourners today/Only spectators at the scene/Relishing in this bizarre event . . . /He died from no acclaim/I heard his dying words/As his final breath he gave/He wanted to be taken seriously/Now he’s taken to the grave.”
