The Sunday Miami Herald featured the following headline: Innocence Lost is Not Easily Restored.
I was curious to see what had suddenly led the Herald to take an interest in abstinence counseling. However, closer scrutiny revealed that this was an article about young Iraqi kids who have lost their innocence about violent death by being in a war zone.
In theory, such an article could have been sensible. But predictably, it was not.
Two examples:
1) One four year old has been affected by seeing beheadings on the Internet. Presumably, we are meant to sympathize. Hello-o?! That has nothing to do with being in a war zone. That has to do with having imbeciles for parents. Creepy imbeciles, too.
2) An example of the terribly traumatized children is cited: two kids are playing a game in which they pretend to shoot each other. Whoever kills the other, wins. Hello-o?! I grew up in Brooklyn and I played that game, too. Sometimes it was called Cowboys and Indians; sometimes Cops and Robbers.
Then again, maybe 1960s Brooklyn was a war zone.
When we were kids they used to force us play dodgeball in gym class.
ReplyDeleteI'm over it now - I'm one of the 'lucky ones' - but not without years of intense Innocence Restoration therapy.
I don't know what it means, Jay, but the dying was always cooler than the killing.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to believe anyone could separate the traumatic effects of living in a "war zone" from the prior traumatic effects of living in Saddam's Iraq.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I knew a woman at the IU Med School who worked with young children from Northern Ireland who had been directly affected by The Troubles. I don't recall any therapy to overcome the trauma of playing Papists and Prots. There are, blessedly, some people whose understanding rises above the level of the Miami Herald.
I love Gary Busey. He tells a great story about one of his first acting jobs on Gunsmoke. He was assigned to die and decided to make it realistic. He died with his eyes open. The show's director thought it was too disturbing and made him die in the conventional eyes-closed, sleeping manner.
ReplyDeleteThey shoulda gone the other way on that one, particularly with bug-eyed Gary Busey.
That's the old Hollywood: now they are more into realism. They die with their eyes open (although, sadly, they live with their eyes closed).
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